The woman turned and glared at him distrustfully, and Mr. Johnson added hastily, “We’ll sit right here on the steps.” He beckoned to the little boy, who hesitated and then responded agreeably to Mr. Johnson’s genial smile. Mr. Johnson brought out a handful of peanuts from his pocket and sat on the steps with the boy, who at first refused the peanuts on the grounds that his mother did not allow him to accept food from strangers; Mr. Johnson said that probably his mother had not intended peanuts to be included, since elephants at the circus ate them, and the boy considered, and then agreed solemnly. They sat on the steps cracking peanuts in a comradely fashion, and Mr. Johnson said, “So you’re moving?”
“Yep,” said the boy.
“Where you going?”
“Vermont.”
“Nice place. Plenty of snow there. Maple sugar, too; you like maple sugar?”
“Sure.”
“Plenty of maple sugar in Vermont. You going to live on a farm?”
“Going to live with Grandpa.”
“Grandpa like peanuts?”
“Sure.”
“Ought to take him some,” said Mr. Johnson, reaching into his pocket. “Just you and Mommy going?”
“Yep.”
“Tell you what,” Mr. Johnson said. “You take some peanuts to eat on the train.”
The boy’s mother, after glancing at them frequently, had seemingly decided that Mr. Johnson was trustworthy, because she had devoted herself wholeheartedly to seeing that the movers did not—what movers rarely do, but every housewife believes they will—crack a leg from her good table, or set a kitchen chair down on a lamp. Most of the furniture was loaded by now, and she was deep in that nervous stage when she knew there was something she had forgotten to pack—hidden away in the back of a closet somewhere, or left at a neighbor’s and forgotten, or on the clothesline—and was trying to remember under stress what it was.
“This all, lady?” the chief mover said, completing her dismay.
Uncertainly, she nodded.
“Want to go on the truck with the furniture, sonny?” the mover asked the boy, and laughed. The boy laughed too and said to Mr: Johnson, “I guess I’ll have a good time at Vermont.”
“Fine time,” said Mr. Johnson, and stood up. “Have one more peanut before you go,” he said to the boy.
The boy’s mother said to Mr. Johnson, “Thank you so much; it was a great help to me.”
“Nothing at all,” said Mr. Johnson gallantly. “Where in Vermont are you going?”
The mother looked at the little boy accusingly, as though he had given away a secret of some importance, and said unwillingly, “Greenwich.”
“Lovely town,” said Mr. Johnson. He took out a card, and wrote a name on the back. “Very good friend of mine lives in Greenwich,” he said. “Call on him for anything you need. His wife makes the best doughnuts in town,” he added soberly to the little boy.
“Swell,” said the little boy.
“Goodby,” said Mr. Johnson.
He went on, stepping happily with his new-shod feet, feeling the warm sun on his back and on the top of his head. Halfway down the block he met a stray dog and fed him a peanut.
At the corner, where another wide avenue faced him, Mr. Johnson decided to go on uptown again. Moving with comparative laziness, he was passed on either side by people hurrying and frowning, and people brushed past him going the other way, clattering along to get somewhere quickly. Mr. Johnson stopped on every corner and waited patiently for the light to change, and he stepped out of the way of anyone who seemed to be in any particular hurry, but one young lady came too fast for him, and crashed wildly into him when he stooped to pat a kitten which had run out onto the sidewalk from an apartment house and was now unable to get back through the rushing feet.
“Excuse me,” said the young lady, trying frantically to pick up Mr. Johnson and hurry on at the same time, “terribly sorry.”
The kitten, regardless now of danger, raced back to its home; “Perfectly all right,” said Mr. Johnson, adjusting himself carefully. “You seem to be in a hurry.”
“Of course I’m in a hurry,” said the young lady. “I’m late.”
She was extremely cross and the frown between her eyes seemed well on its way to becoming permanent. She had obviously awakened late, because she had not spent any extra time in making herself look pretty, and her dress was plain and unadorned with collar or brooch, and her lipstick was noticeably crooked. She tried to brush past Mr. Johnson, but, risking her suspicious displeasure, he took her arm and said, “Please wait.”
“Look,” she said ominously. “I ran into you and your lawyer can see my lawyer and I will gladly pay all damages and all inconveniences suffered therefrom but please this minute let me go because I am late.”
“Late for what?” said Mr. Johnson; he tried his winning smile on her but it did no more than keep her, he suspected, from knocking him down again.
“Late for work,” she said between her teeth. “Late for my employment. I have a job and if I am late I lose exactly so much an hour and I cannot really afford what your pleasant conversation is costing me, be it ever so pleasant.”
“I’ll pay for it,” said Mr. Johnson. Now these were magic words, not necessarily because they were true, or because she seriously expected Mr. Johnson to pay for anything, but because Mr. Johnson’s flat statement, obviously innocent of irony, could not be, coming from Mr. Johnson, anything but the statement of a responsible and truthful and respectable man.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I said that since I am obviously responsible for your being late I shall certainly pay for it.”
“Don’t be silly,” she said, and for the first time the frown disappeared. “I wouldn’t expect you to pay for anything—a few minutes ago I was offering to pay you. Anyway,” she added, almost smiling, “it was my fault”
“What happens if you don’t go to work?”
She stared. “I don’t get paid.”
“Precisely,” said Mr. Johnson.
“What do you mean, precisely? If I don’t show up at the office exactly twenty minutes ago I lose a dollar and twenty cents an hour, or two cents a minute or . . .” She thought. “... Almost a dime for the time I’ve spent talking to you.”
Mr. Johnson laughed, and finally she laughed, too. “You’re late already,” he pointed out. “Will you give me another four cents worth?”
“I don’t understand why.”
“You’ll see,” Mr. Johnson promised. He led her over to the side of the walk, next to the buildings, and said, “Stand here,” and went out into the rush of people going both ways. Selecting and considering, as one who must make a choice involving perhaps whole years of lives, he estimated the people going by. Once he almost moved, and then at the last minute thought better of it and drew back. Finally, from half a block away, he saw what he wanted, and moved out into the center of the traffic to intercept a young man, who was hurrying, and dressed as though he had awakened late, and frowning.
“Oof,” said the young man, because Mr. Johnson had thought of no better way to intercept anyone than the one the young woman had unwittingly used upon him. “Where do you think you’re going?” the young man” demanded from the sidewalk.
“I want to speak to you,” said Mr. Johnson ominously.
The young man got up nervously, dusting himself and eyeing Mr. Johnson. “What for?” he said. “What’d I do?”
“That’s what bothers me most about people nowadays,” Mr. Johnson complained broadly to the people passing. “No matter whether they’ve done anything or not, they always figure someone’s after them. About what you’re going to do,” he told the young man.