For two weeks this daily visit had been almost the best of Bean’s secrets.  For two weeks he had known that his passion was hopeless, yet had he yearned out his heart there before the endearing thing.  In the shock of his first discovery, spurred to unwonted daring, he had actually penetrated the store meaning to hear the impossible price.  But an angry-looking old man (so Bean thought) had come noisily from a back room and glowered at him threateningly over big spectacles.  So he had hastily priced a convenient jar of goldfish for which he felt no affection whatever, mumbled something about the party’s calling, himself, next day, and escaped to the street.  Anyway, it would have been no good, asking the price; it was bound to be a high price; and he couldn’t keep a dog; and if he did, a policeman would shoot it for being mad when it was only playing.

But some time—­yet, would it be this same animal?  In all the world there could not be another so acceptable.  He shivered with apprehension each day as he neared the place, lest some connoisseur had forestalled him.  He quickened to a jealous distrust of any passerby who halted beside him to look into the window, and felt a great relief when these passed on.

Once he had feared the worst.  A man beside him holding a candy-eating child by the hand had said, “Now, now, sir!” and, “Well, well, was he a nice old doggie!” Then they had gone into the store, very businesslike, and Bean had felt that he might be taking his last look at a loved one.  Lawless designs throbbed in his brain—­a wild plan to shadow the man to his home—­to have that dog, no matter how.  But when they came out the child carried nothing more than a wicker cage containing two pink-eyed white rabbits that were wrinkling their noses furiously.

With a last cherishing look at most of the beauty in all the world—­it still slept despite the tearing clatter of a parrot with catarrhal utterance that shrieked over and over, “Oh, what a fool!  Oh, what a fool!”—­he turned away.  What need to say that, with half the opportunity, his early infamy of the shell would have been repeated.  He wondered darkly if the old man left that dog in the window nights!

He reached for his watch before he remembered its loss.  Then he reminded himself bitterly that street clocks were abundant and might be looked at by simpletons who couldn’t keep watches.  He bought an evening paper that shrieked with hydrocephalic headlines and turned into a dingy little restaurant advertising a “Regular Dinner de luxe with Dessert, 35 cts.”

There was gloom rather than gusto in his approach to the table.  He expected little; everything had gone wrong; and he was not surprised to note that the cloth on the table must also have served that day for a “Business Men’s Lunch, 35 cts.,” as advertised on a wall placard.  Several business men seemed to have eaten there—­careless men, their minds perhaps on business while they ate.  A moody waiter took his order, feebly affecting to efface all stains from the tablecloth by one magic sweep of an already abused napkin.