Presently he was embarrassed by a stout, aggressive man who clutched a strap with one hand and some evening papers with the other, a man who clearly considered it outrageous that he should be compelled to stand in a street car.  He glared at Bean with a cold, questioning indignation, shifting from one foot to the other, and seeming to be on the point of having words about it.  This was not long to be endured.  Bean glanced out in feigned dismay, as if at a desired cross-street he had carelessly passed, sprang toward the door of the car and caromed heavily against a tired workingman who still, however, was not too tired to put his sense of injury into quick, pithy words of the street.  The pretty girl tittered horribly and the stout man, already in Bean’s seat, rattled his papers impatiently, implying that people in that state ought to be kept off in the first place.

He had meant to leave the car and try another, but there at the step was another too-large policeman helping an uncertain old lady to the ground, so he slinkingly insinuated himself to the far corner of the platform, where, for forty city blocks, a whistling messenger boy gored his right side with the corners of an unyielding box while a dreamy-eyed man who, as Bulger would have said, had apparently been sopping it up like you see some do, leaned a friendly elbow on his shoulder, dented his new hat and from time to time stepped elaborately on his natty shoes with the blue cloth uppers.  Also, the conductor demanded and received a second fare from him.  What was the use of saying you had paid inside?  The conductor was a desperate looking man who would probably say he knew that game, and stop the car....

Something of the sort always happened to him in street cars.  It was bad enough when you walked, with people jostling you and looking as if they wondered what right you had to be there.

At last came the street down which he made a daily pilgrimage and he popped from the crowd on the platform like a seed squeezed from an orange.

Reaching the curb alive—­the crossing policeman graciously halted a huge motor-truck driven by a speed-enthusiast—­he corrected the latest dent in his hat, straightened his cravat, readjusted the shoulder lines of the coat appertaining to America’s greatest eighteen-dollar suit—­“$18.00—­No More; No Less!”—­and with a fear-quickened hand discovered that his watch was gone, his gold hunting-case watch and horseshoe fob set with brilliants, that Aunt Clara had given him on his twenty-first birthday for not smoking!

A moment he stood, raging, fearing.  His money was safe, but they might decide to come back for that.  Or the policeman might come up and make an ugly row because he had let himself be robbed in a public conveyance.  He would have to prove that the watch was his; probably have to tell why Aunt Clara had given it to him.