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.
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.
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