He walked up and down the pavement smoking cigarette after cigarette, his talking shoes making a tap-tap click on the hard ground. He scanned the streaming cars with his eyes. It was seven o'clock in the evening, and he had a little difficulty in reading the numbers of the passing cars. The sight of a black Kapitan made him start, especially when it bore the ‘Taxi’ lamp. He was engaged in reading the number of such a car when he bumped into a man walking hurriedly by. All his pent-up anger came forth now, and he grabbed the man's shirt and asked in a booming voice, ‘What do you think you are doing, kicking me around like that? Are you going to beg me or not?’ The man, short and shabbily dressed, looked like a dwarf beneath Tough Guy's huge frame. He was stout in spirit, however, for his answer betrayed no fear.

‘What have I done to be shaken like that?’ he said, ‘You rather, who bumped into me do not give an excuse, instead you hold my shirt and shame me. Is that your good manners, impudent boy?’

‘Good Gracious!’ shouted the surprised Tough Guy. ‘Is that what you say? And you have the impudence to dare say I am a boy. Okay, I will show you whether it is you who feed me.’ He was in the act of carrying out his threat when the loud blast of a horn made him leave the man and jump for dear life. In his fury, he'd forgotten that he was standing in front of a Taxi Station. A driver who had spotted a man and a lady coming from the opposite direction was speeding up to them to see whether they would come in for service. The zeal with which he was accelerating was such that had Tough Guy wasted another moment he would have been hit. He jumped clear, however, and landed in the sand at the station, to the complete satisfaction of his would-be victim. The latter strolled away wondering what was wrong with this generation. ‘The whole fact is that they ain't got no ethics, that's the whole trouble’, he mused as he walked away.