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.

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