At twenty minutes after three he wondered if he mightn't reasonably disappear. He would walk in the park and say afterward—if there should be an afterward—that he had given them up. An easy way out. He would do it. Twenty minutes more passed and he still meant to do it, knowing he wouldn't.
Then came the blare of a motor horn and Breede's biggest and blackest car descended upon him, stopping neatly at the curb.
He retained his calm, nonchalantly doffing the new straw hat.
"Just strolling off," he said; "given you up."
"Pops wanted to come," explained the flapper. "I had a perfectly annoying time not letting him. What a darling child of a dog! Does he want to—well, he shall!"
And Nap did at once. He seemed in the flapper to be greeting an old friend. He interrogated his lawful owner from the flapper's embrace, then reached up to implant a moist salute upon the ear of Grandma, who at once removed herself from his immediate presence.
"Sit there yourself," she commanded Bean. And Bean sat there beside the flapper, with Nap between them. The car moved gently on under the gaze of the impressed Cassidy, who had clattered up the iron stairway. Cassidy's gaze seemed to say, "All right, me lad, but you want t' look out f'r that sort. I know th' kind well!"
The car was moving swiftly now, heading for the north and the open.
"They cut us off yesterday," said the flapper. "I know I shall simply make a lot of trouble for that operator some day."
He wondered if she had heard that mad "Chubbins!" But now the flapper smiled upon him with a wondrous content, and he could say nothing. Instead of talking he stroked the head of Nap, who was panting with the excitement of this celestial adventure.