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handed a
bill to the girl. “This about equals your day’s pay.”
    “But no,” she
said, surprised in spite of herself. “I mean, I couldn’t.”
    “Please do not
interrupt,” Mr. Johnson told her. “And here” he said to the young man, “this will take care of you” The young man accepted
the bill dazedly, but said, “Probably counterfeit,” to the young woman out of
the side of his mouth. “Now,” Mr. Johnson went on, disregarding the young man, “what
is your name, miss?”
    “Kent,” she said
helplessly. “Mildred Kent.”
    “Fine,” said Mr.
Johnson. “And you, sir?”
    “Arthur Adams,” said
the young man stiffly.
    “Splendid,” said
Mr. Johnson. “Now, Miss Kent, I would like you to meet Mr. Adams. Mr. Adams,
Miss Kent.”
    Miss Kent
stared, wet her lips nervously, made a gesture as though she might run, and
said, “How do you do?”
    Mr. Adams
straightened his shoulders, scowled at Mr. Johnson, made a gesture as though he
might run, and said, “How do you do?”
    “Now this” said Mr. Johnson,
taking several bills from his wallet, “should be enough for the day for both of
you. I would suggest, perhaps, Coney Island—although I personally am not fond
of the place—or perhaps a nice lunch somewhere, and dancing, or a matinee, or
even a movie, although take care to choose a really good one; there are so many bad movies these
days. You might,” he said, struck with an inspiration, “visit the Bronx Zoo, or
the Planetarium. Anywhere, as a matter of fact,” he concluded, “that you would
like to go. Have a nice time.”
    As he started to
move away, Arthur Adams, breaking from his dumbfounded stare, said, “But see
here, mister, you can’t do this. Why—how do you know—I mean, we don’t even know—I mean, how
do you know we won’t just take the money and not do what you said?”
    “You’ve taken
the money,” Mr. Johnson said. “You don’t have to follow any of my suggestions.
You may know something you prefer to do—perhaps a museum, or something.”
    “But suppose I
just run away with it and leave her here?”
    “I know you won’t,”
said Mr. Johnson gently, “because you remembered to ask me that. Goodbye,” he
added, and went on.
    As he stepped up
the street, conscious of the sun on his head and his good shoes, he heard from
somewhere behind him the young man saying, “Look, you know you don’t have to if you don’t want
to,” and the girl saying, “But unless you don’t want to...” Mr. Johnson smiled
to himself and then thought that he had better hurry along; when he wanted to
he could move very quickly, and before the young woman had gotten around to
saying, “Well, I will if you will,” Mr. Johnson was several blocks away and had already stopped
twice, once to help a lady lift several large packages into a taxi and once to
hand a peanut to a seagull. By this time he was in an area of large stores and
many more people and he was buffeted constantly from either side by people
hurrying and cross and late and sullen. Once he offered a peanut to a man who
asked him for a dime, and once he offered a peanut to a bus driver who had
stopped his bus at an intersection and had opened the window next to his seat
and put out his head as though longing for fresh air and the comparative quiet
of the traffic. The man wanting a dime took the peanut because Mr. Johnson had
wrapped a dollar bill around it, but the bus driver took the peanut and asked
ironically, “You want a transfer, Jack?”
    On a busy corner
Mr. Johnson encountered two young people—for one minute he thought they might
be Mildred Kent and Arthur Adams—who were eagerly scanning a newspaper, their
backs pressed against a storefront to avoid the people passing, their heads
bent together. Mr. Johnson, whose curiosity was insatiable, leaned onto the
storefront next to them and peeked over the man’s shoulder; they were scanning
the “Apartments Vacant” columns.
    Mr. Johnson
remembered the street