Page:Wilson - Bunker bean.djvu/332

304 The flapper sighed in contentment, now.

"We needn't ever do it again," she said. "How they ever made it in that old barn"

Bean had occupied himself in thinking it was funny about kings. To have been born a king meant not so much after all. He still dwelt upon it as they sat looking down into the shadowed garden.

"There was that last one," he said musingly. "Born as much a king as any and look what they did to him. Better man than the other two before him  they had 'habits' enough, and he was decent. But he couldn't make them believe in him. He couldn't have believed in himself very hard. His picture looks like a man I know in New York named Cassidy  always puttering around, dead serious about something that doesn't matter at all. You got to bluff people, and this poor old dub didn't know how  so they clipped his head off for it. Two or three times a good bluff would have saved him."

"No bath, no furnace," murmured the flapper. "That perfectly reminds me, soon as we get back"

"Then," pursued Bean, "along comes Mr. little old George W. Napoleon Bluff and makes them eat out of his hand in about five minutes. Didn't he walk over them, though? And they haven't quit thanking him for it yet. Saw a lot of 'em snivelling over him at that tomb this morning. Think he'd died only yesterday. You know,