crets. 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 wit