hings into shape. You see, I have an idea--"

"Don't you buy the least little thing until I know. We want to be sure
everything harmonizes and I've just perfectly got everything in my head
the way it will be."

"That's right; that's the only way."

"You didn't say anything about--you know--to poor old Pops, did you?"

"Why, no. I didn't. You see he's been pretty much thinking about other
things all day, and I--"

"Well, that's right. I was afraid you'd be just perfectly impatient. But
you leave it all to me. I'll manage. It's the dearest joke! I may not
tell them for two or three days. Every time I get alone I just perfectly
giggle myself into spasms. Isn't it the funniest?"

"Ha, ha, ha, ha! I should think it was." He was fearfully hoping her
keen sense of humour might continue to rule.

"We _do_, don't we?"

"Do what?"

"_You_ know, stupid!"

"Yes, _yes_ indeed! We just perfectly _do_!"

"More than any two people ever did before, don't we?"

"Well, I should think so; and then some."

"I knew you'd feel that way. Well, good-bye!"

He could fancy her giving the double nod as she hung up the receiver.

During the ride uptown he talked large with a voluble gentleman who had
finished his evening paper and who wished to recite its leading
editorial from memory as something of his own. They used terms like "the
tired business man," "increased cost of living," "small investor," "the
common people," and "enemies of the Public Good." The man was especially
bitter against the Wall Street ring, and remarked that any one wishing
to draw a lesson from history need look no farther back than the French
Revolution. The signs were to be observed on every hand.

Bean felt a little guilty, though he tried to carry it off. Was he not
one of that same Wall Street ring? He pictured himself as a tired
business man eating boiled eggs of a morning in a dining-room panelled
with fumed oak, the flapper across the table in some little old rag. He
thought it sounded pretty luxurious--like a betrayal of the common
people. Still he had to follow his destiny. You couldn't get around
that.

He stood a long time before Ram-tah that night, grateful for the lesson
he had drawn from him in the afternoon. Back there among those
fierce-eyed directors, badgered by the most objectionable of them,
nerving himself to say presently that he could imagine nothing of less
consequence, there had come before his eyes the inspiring face of the
wi