ame worth while.

The most of them, he was glad to note, were in dress slightly more
advanced than Breede. One of them, a small but important-looking old
gentleman with a purple face and a white parted beard, became on the
instant Bean's ideal for correctness. From his gray spats to his
top-hat, he was "dignified yet different," although dressing, for
example, in a more subdued key than Bulger. Yet he was a constantly
indignant looking old gentleman, and Bean guessed that he would be a
trouble-maker on any board of directors. It seemed to him that he would
like to take this person's place on the board; oust him in spite of his
compelling garments.

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