Go way off
to other end of little old steamer; stay there."

The flapper saw it was no time for woman's nursing. Sadly she went.

"Telephone to a drug-store," demanded Bean after her, but she did not
hear.

He continued to die, mercifully unmolested, until the man from Hartford
came in to ascertain if his locks had been tampered with.

"Hold to the all good!" urged the man at a moment when it was too
poignantly, too openly certain that Bean could hold to very little
indeed.

"Uh-hah!" gasped Bean.

"Go into the silence," urged the man kindly.

"You go--" retorted Bean swiftly; but he should not further be shamed by
the recording of language which he lived to regret.

The Hartford man said, "Tut-tut-tut!" and went elsewhere than he had
been told to go.

There ensued a dreadful time of alternating night and day, with
recurrent visions of the flapper, who perfectly knew and said that he
had been eating stuff out of the wrong cans.

"'As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he'," affirmed the Hartford
person each morning as he shaved.

And a merry party gathered in the adjoining stateroom of afternoons and
sang songs of the jolly sailor's life: "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean,"
and "Sailing, Sailing Over the Bounding Main."

On the morning of the fourth day he made the momentous discovery that
the image of food was not repulsive to all his better instincts.
Carefully he got upon his feet and they amazingly supported him. He
dressed with but slight discomfort. He would audaciously experiment upon
himself with the actual sight of food. It was the luncheon hour.

Outside the door he met the flapper on one of her daily visits of
inspection.

"I perfectly well knew you'd never die," exclaimed the flapper, and laid
glad hands upon him.

"Where do they eat?" asked Bean.

"How jolly! We'll eat together," rejoined the flapper. "The funniest
thing! They all kept up till half an hour ago. Then it got rougher and
rougher and now they're all three laid out. Poor Moms says it's the
smell of the rubber matting, and Granny says she had too many of those
perfectly whiffy old cigarettes, and Pops says he's plain seasick.
Serves 'em rippingly well right--_taggers!_"

She convoyed him to the dining-room, where he was welcomed by a waiter
who had sorrowfully thought not to come to his notice. He greedily
scanned the menu card, while the waiter, of his own initiative, placed
some trifles of German delicatessen before them.