"
He found he could strangely not be an upstart another moment in the
presence of that flapper. He was over kneeling beside her, reaching his
arms up about her, pressing her cheek down to his. The flapper held him
tightly and wept.
"There, there!" he soothed her, smoothing the golden brown hair that
spilled about her shoulders. "No one ever going to hurt you while I'm
around. You're the just perfectly _dearest_, if you come right down to
it. Now, now! 'S all right. Everything all right!"
"It's those perfectly old taggers," exploded the flapper, suddenly
recovering her true form, "just furiously tagging."
"'S got to stop right now," declared Bean, rising. "Wipe that egg off
your face, and let's get out of here."
"London," she suggested brightly. "Granny has always--"
"No London!" he broke in, visibly returning to the Corsican or upstart
manner. "And no Grandma, no Pops, no Moms! You and me--us--understand
what I mean? Think I'm going to have my wife sloshing around over there,
voting, smashing windows, getting run in and sent to the island for
thirty days. No! Not for little old George W. Me!"
"I never wanted to so very much," confessed the flapper with surprising
meekness. "You tell where to go, then."
Bean debated. Baseball! Perhaps there would be a game on the home
grounds that day. Paris might be playing London or St. Petersburg or
Berlin or Venice.
"First we go see a ball game," he said.
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