“Telephone for Boston Baked,” called the office-boy wit, late in the afternoon.

Bulger looked sympathetic.

“Same trouble I have,” he confided as Bean passed him, “Take ’em on once and they bother the life out of you.”

“You’d never believe,” came the voice of the flapper.  “I found the darlingest old sideboard with claw-feet yesterday over on Fourth Avenue.  He wants two hundred and eighty, but they’re all robbers, and I just perfectly mean to make him come down five or ten dollars.  Every little counts.  You leave it to me.”

“Sure!  You fix it all up!”

“And maybe we won’t want fumed oak in the dining-room—­maybe a rich mahogany stain.  Would that suit?  I’m only thinking of you.”

“I’ll leave all that to you; you’ll perfectly well manage.”

“I just perfectly darling well knew you’d say that; and I’m sending you down a car—­”

“A what?  Car?” This was even more alarming than the darling old sideboard.

“Just a little old last year’s car.  Poor old Pops would give it to me now if I asked him—­but it’s just as well to have it away in case Moms could ever make him change his mind, only of course she perfectly well can’t do anything of the sort.  But anyway I’m sending it to that shop around the corner in the street below you, and they’ll hold it there to your order.  You never can tell; we might need it suddenly some time, and anyway you ought to have it, don’t you see, because I’m just perfectly giving it to you this minute, and you can run about in it with that dearest dog, and it’s the very first thing I ever gave you, isn’t it?  I’ll always remember it just for that.  It will do us all right for a few weeks, until we can look around.  And there never was any one before, was there?  You just needn’t answer; you’d have to say ‘No,’ and anyway Granny says a young—­you know what—­should never ask silly questions about what happened before she met him, because it perfectly well makes rows, and I know she’s right, but there never was, was there, and no matter anyway, because it’s settled forever now, and we do, don’t we?  My! but I’m excited.  Don’t forget what I said about the brass andirons and the curtains for your den.  Goo’-bye.”

“Huh! yes, of course not!” said Bean, but the flapper had gone.

Back at the typewriter he tried to collect his memories of her message:  sideboard with darling feet of some kind, no fumed oak, perhaps—­brass andirons, curtains for his den.  He couldn’t recall what she had said about those.  Maybe it would come to him.  He wished he had told her that he already had a few good etchings.  And the car!  That was plain in his mind—­little old last year’s thing—­at that shop around the corner.  Did one say “garrash” or “garrige”?  He heard both.