Bunker Bean eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 278 pages of information about Bunker Bean.

Bunker Bean eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 278 pages of information about Bunker Bean.

Bulger consumed another high-ball, filled his cigarette case, and the two stood a moment on Broadway.  Breede, the last to leave his office, crossed the pavement to a waiting automobile.

“There’s his foxy Rebates going to the arms of his family,” said Bulger, disrespectfully applying to Breede a term that had more than once made him interesting to the Interstate Commerce Commission.

“See the three skirts in the back?  That’s the Missis and the two squabs.  Young one’s only a flapper, but the old one’s a peacherine for looks.  Go on, lamp her once!”

Bean turned his diffident gaze upon the occupants of the tonneau with a sudden wild dream that he would stare insolently.  But his eyes unaccountably came to rest in the eyes of the young one—­the flapper.  He saw only the eyes, and he felt that the eyes were seeing him.  The motor chugged slowly up Broadway, nosing for a path about a slowly driven truck; the flapper looked back.

“Not half bad, that!” said Bean, recovering, and speaking in what he felt was the correct Bulger tone.

“Not for mine,” said Bulger firmly.  “Big sister, though, not so worse.  Met up with her one time out to the country place, takin’ stuff for the old man the time he got kidneys in his feet.  I made a hit with her, too, on the level, but say! nothin’ doing there for old John W. me!  I dropped the thing like it was poison ivy.  Me doin’ the nuptial in a family like that, and bein’ under Pop’s thumb the rest of my life?  Ask me, that’s all; ask me!  Wake me up any time in the night and ask me.”

Again Bean was thrilled, resolving then and there that no daughter of Breede’s should ever wed him.  Bulger was entirely right.  It wouldn’t do.  Bulger looked at his watch.

“Well, s’long; got a date down in the next block.  She’s out at five.  Say, I want you to get a flash at her some day.  Broadway car, yesterday, me goin’ uptown with Max, see? she lookin’ at her gloves.  ’Pipe the queen in black,’ I says to Max, jes’ so she could hear, y’ understand.  Say, did she gimme the eye.  Not at all!  Not at all!  Old William H. Smoothy, I guess yes.  Pretty soon a gink setting beside her beats it, and quick change for me.  Had her all dated up by Fourteenth Street.  Dinner and a show, if things look well.  Some class to her, all right.  One the manicures in that shop down there.  Well, s’long!”

Looking over his shoulder with sickish envy after the invincible Bulger, Bean left the curb for a passing car and came to a jolting stop against the biggest policeman he had ever seen.  He mumbled a horrified apology, but his victim did not even turn to look down upon him.  He fled into the car and found a seat, still trembling from that collision.  From across the aisle a pretty girl surveyed him with veiled insolence.  He furtively felt of his neutral-tinted cravat and took his hat off to see if there could be a dent in it.  The girl, having plumbed his insignificance, now unconcernedly read the signs above his head.  There was bitterness in the stare he bestowed upon her trim lines.  Some day Bulger would chance to be on that car with her—­then she’d be taken down a bit—­Bulger who, by Fourteenth Street, had them all dated up.

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
Bunker Bean from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.