Taking Nap along, he somehow felt, was a wise precaution.  He didn’t know what mad thing you might expect of Grandma, the Demon, but surely nothing very discreditable could occur in the presence of that innocent dog.  And he would play the waiting game; make ’em show their hands.

At twenty minutes after three he wondered if he mightn’t reasonably disappear.  He would walk in the park and say afterward—­if there should be an afterward—­that he had given them up.  An easy way out.  He would do it.  Twenty minutes more passed and he still meant to do it, knowing he wouldn’t.

Then came the blare of a motor horn and Breede’s biggest and blackest car descended upon him, stopping neatly at the curb.

He retained his calm, nonchalantly doffing the new straw hat.

“Just strolling off,” he said; “given you up.”

“Pops wanted to come,” explained the flapper.  “I had a perfectly annoying time not letting him.  What a darling child of a dog! Does he want to—­well, he shall!”

And Nap did at once.  He seemed in the flapper to be greeting an old friend.  He interrogated his lawful owner from the flapper’s embrace, then reached up to implant a moist salute upon the ear of Grandma, who at once removed herself from his immediate presence.

“Sit there yourself,” she commanded Bean.  And Bean sat there beside the flapper, with Nap between them.  The car moved gently on under the gaze of the impressed Cassidy, who had clattered up the iron stairway.  Cassidy’s gaze seemed to say, “All right, me lad, but you want t’ look out f’r that sort.  I know th’ kind well!”

The car was moving swiftly now, heading for the north and the open.

“They cut us off yesterday,” said the flapper.  “I know I shall simply make a lot of trouble for that operator some day.”

He wondered if she had heard that mad “Chubbins!” But now the flapper smiled upon him with a wondrous content, and he could say nothing.  Instead of talking he stroked the head of Nap, who was panting with the excitement of this celestial adventure.

“I like you in that,” confided the flapper with an approving glance.  He wondered if she meant the hat, the cravat or America’s very best suit for the money.

“I like you in that,” he retorted with equal vagueness, at last stung to speech.

“Oh, this!” explained the flapper in pleased deprecation.  “It’s just a little old rag.  What’s his darling name?”

“Eh?  Name?  Napoleon, Man and—­I mean Napoleon.  I call him Nap,” he said shortly, feeling himself in chameleon-like sympathy with the cravat.

Grandma, on the seat in front of them, stared silently ahead, but there was something ominous in her rigidity.  She had the air of a captor.

Once when his hand was on Nap the flapper brazenly patted it.  He pretended not to notice.

“Everything’s all right,” she said.