it no longer seemed to him that he was rich at all.
He was seated opposite Breede taking letters in shorthand as if he were
merely a thirty-dollar-a-week Bunker Bean. Breede was refusing to
recognize any change in their relationship. He made no reference to
their talk of the day before and his detached cuffs stubbornly occupied
their old position on the desk. Was it all a dream--and the flapper,
too?

But the flapper soon called him to the telephone.

"Poor old Pops came home late, and he says you're just perfectly a
puzzle to him," she began.

"I know," said Bean; "he says he can't make me out."

"And Moms began to say the silliest things about you, until I just had
to take her seriously, so I perfectly told her that woman had come into
her own in this generation, thanks to a few noble leaders of our
sex--it's in Granny's last speech at the league--and that sent her up in
the air. I don't think she can be as well as she used to be; and I told
Pops he had to give me some money, and he said he knew it as well as I
did, so what was the use of talking about it, and so he just perfectly
gave me fifty or sixty thousand dollars and told me to make it go as far
as I could, but I don't know, that grocer says the cost of living is
going up every day because the Senate isn't insurgent enough; and anyway
I'll get the tickets and a suite on that little old boat that sails
Wednesday. I thought you'd want a day or two; and everything will be
very quiet, only the family present, coming into town for it, you know,
Wednesday morning, and the boat sails at noon, and I'll be so perfectly
glad when it's all over because it's a very serious step for a young
girl to take. Granny herself says it should never be taken lightly,
unless you just perfectly know, but of course we do, don't we? I think
you'll like fumed oak better, after all--and poor old Pops saying you're
such a puzzle to him. He says he can't make out just how many kinds of a
perfectly swear-word fool you are, but I can, and that's just
deliciously enough for anybody. And you're to come out to-morrow and
have tea and things in the afternoon, and _I'm_ going to be before
sister is, after all. She's perfectly furious about it and says I ought
to be put back into short skirts, but I just perfectly knew it the very
first time I ever looked at you. Stay around there, in case I think of
something I've forgotten. G'bye."

Wednesday--a little old steamer sailing at noon! A steamer,