And Breede would know then that he was something more than a machine. On
the whole, he felt sorry for Breede at times. Perhaps he would let him
have a little of the baseball stock.
So he sat and dreamed of his great past and of his brilliant future.
Perhaps, after all, Bean as the blind poet had been not the least
authentic of Balthasar's visions.
And inevitably he encountered the flapper in this dreaming; "Chubbins,"
he liked to call her. More and more he was suspecting that Tommy Hollins
was not the man for Chubbins. He would prefer to see her the bride of an
older man, two or three, or even four, years older, who was settled in
life. A young girl--a young girl's parents--couldn't be too careful!
He was not for many days at a time deprived of the sight of the young
girl in question. She had formed a habit of calling for her father at
the close of his day's hard work. And she did not wait for him in the
big car; she sat in his office, where, after she had inquired
solicitously about his poor foot, she settled her gaze upon Bean. And
Bean no longer evaded this gaze. She was a clever, attractive little
thing and he liked her well. He thought of things he would tell her for
her own good at the first opportunity.
He wondered guiltily when Breede's next attack might be expected, and he
had a lively impression that the flapper, too, was more curious than
alarmed about this. He seemed to feel that she was actually wishing to
be told things by him for her own good.
However that may be, his next summons to the country place came without
undue delay, and it is not at all improbable that Breede fell a victim
to what the terminology of one of our most popular cults identifies as
"malicious animal magnetism."
On this occasion he was not oppressed by those attentions which the
flapper and Grandma, the Demon, still bestowed upon him. Where he had
once fled, he now put himself in the way of them. He listened with
admirably simulated interest to Grandma's account of the suffrage play
for which she was rehearsing. She was to appear in the mob scene. He was
certain she would lend vivacity to any mob. But he was glad that the
flapper was not to appear. Voting and smashing windows were bad enough.
He tried at first to talk to the flapper about Tommy Hollins, whom he
airily designated as "that Hollins boy". It seemed to be especially
needed, because the Hollins boy arrived after breakfast every day and
left only in the late afternoon. But the flapper declined nevertheless
to consider him as meat for serious converse.
Bean considered that this was sheer flirting, whereupon he flung
principle to the winds and flirted himself.
"You show signs of life," declared Grandma, who was quick to note this
changed demeanor. And Bean smirked like a man of the world.
"She never set her mind on anything yet that she didn't get it," added
Grandma, naming no one. "She's like her father there."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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