He shrank back, giving her all the room he could, set his bag of golf-clubs between his knees, and looked innocent. First, as all New Yorkers do, he read the line of advertisements opposite with the usual personal sense of resentment; then he carelessly scanned the people across the aisle. As usual, they resembled everybody he had never particularly noticed; he fished out the evening paper, remembered that he had read it on the ferryboat, stuck it into his golf-bag, and contemplated the battered ends of his golf-clubs.
Station after station flashed yellow lamps along the line of car windows; passengers went and passengers took their places; in one of the streets below he caught a glimpse of a fire engine vomiting sparks and black smoke; in another an ambulance with a squalid assemblage crowded around a policeman who was emerging from a drug store.
He had pretty nearly succeeded in forgetting the girl and his mortification; he cast a calmly casual glance over his well-fitting trousers and shoes. The edge of a shoe-lace lay exposed, and he leisurely remedied this untidy accident, leaning over and tying the lace securely with a double knot.
Fourteenth, Eighteenth, Twenty-third, ran the stations. He gathered his golf-bag instinctively and sat alert, prepared to rise and leave the car with dignity.
"Twenty-eighth!" It was his station. Just as he rose the attractive girl beside him sprang up, and at the same instant his right leg was jerked from under him and he sat down in his seat with violence. Before he comprehended what had happened, the girl, with a startled exclamation, fell back into her seat, and he felt a spasmodic wrench at his foot again.
Astonished, he struggled to rise once more, but something held him—his foot seemed to be caught; and as he turned he encountered her bewildered face and felt another desperate tug which brought him abruptly into his seat again.
"What on earth is the matter?" he asked.
"'I—I don't know,' she stammered; 'my shoe seems tied to yours.'"