It was a prospect all golden to dream upon. His
spirit grew tall and its fibre toughened.
To be sure, he did not achieve a kingly disregard for public opinion all
in one day. There was the matter of that scarlet cravat. Monday morning
he excavated it from the bottom of the trunk, where it lay beside
"Napoleon, Man and Lover." He even adjusted it, carelessly pretending
that it was just any cravat, the first that had come to hand. But its
colour was still too alarming. _It_--so he usually thought of the great
Ram-tah--would have worn the cravat without a tremor, but It had been
born a king. One glance at the thing about his neck had vividly recalled
the awkward circumstance that, to the world at large, he was still
Bunker Bean, a youth incapable of flaunt or flourish.
Let it not be thought, however, that his new growth showed no result
above ground. He purchased and wore that very morning a cravat not
entirely red, it is true, but one distinguished by a narrow red stripe
on a backing of bronze, which the clerk who manoeuvred the sale assured
him was "tasty." Also he commanded a suit of clothes of a certain light
check in which the Bean of uninspired days would never have braved
public scrutiny. Such were the immediate and actual fruits of Ram-tah's
influence.
There were other effects, perhaps more subtle. Performing his accustomed
work for Breede that day, he began to study his employer from the
kingly, or Ram-tah, point of view.
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