Mark stood there dumbly. He was a young man and so he didn’t at once foresee what was about to happen.

A crowd gathered in no time. The old lady was putting on a show. Mark didn’t get it. He would have allowed her a thousand points⁠—even fifteen hundred⁠—without argument. But he got the shock of his young life.

“Thirty thousand points!” she screamed at him, and thrust a pad of slips at him. “Sign my slip, please.”

Mark took the pad automatically. He took the pencil she held out. He started to sign. He’d never get a credit balance at the Central Bureau now, but he didn’t care. Maybe he’d get in so deep they’d give him some work.

The old lady’s voice rose unexpectedly. “My feelings are hurt, too. He did it deliberately. Five thousand points for my injured feelings.”

Dazedly Mark wrote down “Thirty-five thousand and no more,” and signed his name. He handed the pad back to her and started on. The crowd was leaving.

But a voice stopped him. A soft voice. “Wait, son.” He looked back. He started to go on, then he saw the old lady’s eyes on his. “Stick around,” she said. There wasn’t any raucousness in her voice now. “Wait till the crowd goes. I want to talk to you.”

Presently he was walking beside her while she laboriously operated the two big hand-wheels that propelled the chair. Two blocks away she turned into an empty building marked “Groceries.” Mark helped her cross the threshold.

Inside, she amazed him by springing out of the chair and standing quite steadily. She was small and she wasn’t as old and wrinkled as he had thought. “You get in the chair,” she said. “I’ll push you. I need the exercise.”