As that seemed out of the question, he walked from the bank to
Forty-Second Street, taking an hour and a half over it. It was better to
go on foot than to sit in a car facing a dozen or twenty strangers, who
would wonder why he looked so miserable. Sensitive people always fancy
that everybody is looking at them and criticising them, when in fact no
one cares a straw how they look or what they do.

Then, too, he was in such a morbid state of mind about his debt that it
looked positively wrong to spend five cents on a car-fare; even the
small change in his pocket was not his own, and that, and hundreds of
dollars besides, must be paid back in sixty days. Otherwise he supposed
he would be bankrupt, which, to his simple mind, meant disgrace as well
as ruin.

It had stopped raining before he reached Grace Church, and as he crossed
Madison Square the sun shone out, the wind had veered to the west, and
the sky was clearing all round. The streets had seemed full before, but
they were positively choking with people now. The shops drew them in and
blew them out again with much less cash about them, as a Pacific whale
swallows water and spouts it out, catching the little fish by thousands
with his internal whalebone fishing-net. But, unlike the fishes, the
people were not a whit less pleased. On the contrary, there was
something in the faces of almost all that is only seen once a year in
New York, and then only for certain hours; and that is real good-will.
For whatever the most home-loving New Yorker may say of his own great
city, good-will to men is not its dominant characteristic, nor peace its
most remarkable feature.

Even poor Overholt, half crazy with disappointment and trouble, could