XI
The day began with placid routine. Breede did his accustomed two-hours' monologue. And no one molested Bean. No one appeared to know that he was other than he seemed, and that big things were going forward. Tully ignored him. Markham, who had the day before called him "Old man!" whistled obliviously as they brushed past each other in the hall. No directors called him in to tell him that would never do with them.
He was grateful for the lull. He couldn't be "stirred up" that way every day. And he needed to gather strength against Breede when Breede should discover that exquisite joke of the flapper's. He suspected that the flapper wouldn't find it funny to keep the thing from poor old Pops more than a few days longer.
"I'll be drawing my last pay next Saturday," he told himself.
"Telephone for Boston Baked," called the office-boy wit, late in the afternoon.
Bulger looked sympathetic.
"Same trouble I have," he confided as Bean passed him, "Take 'em on once and they bother the life out of you."
"You'd never believe," came the voice of the flapper. "I found the darlingest old sideboard with claw-feet yesterday over on Fourth Avenue. He wants two hundred and eighty, but they're all robbers, and I just perfectly mean to make him come down five or ten dollars. Every little counts. You leave it to me."
"Sure! You fix it all up!"
"And maybe we won't want fumed oak in the dining-room—maybe a rich mahogany stain. Would that suit? I'm only thinking of you."