"If you don't want to give me money, or a job, or something to eat," he announces loudly to the subway car, "then why not adopt me? I'm cleaner than a dog, I'm housebroken, so I don't have to be walked." Most of us are amused, but still, not many come across with the handout he's really after. I don't, I just don't feel like it today, and besides I'm absorbed in a book, which seems excuse enough.
I look up, though, after he passes, and notice that a rather pretty girl down the aisle is smiling, and that when the beggar -- he's surprisingly young, and surprisingly clean-cut, even good-looking -- comes to her seat, he smiles back, and when she gets off at the next station he pops out too and strides beside her, chatting her up, she still smiling, obviously feeling not unfriendly towards him, or, more than that, leaving the rest of us, or me anyway, to wonder if the whole thing was a put-on, two kids on a lark, but no, he did look like he needed help, hair too oily, clothes stained past the cusp of respectability, neither of which seemed to bother the girl at all, so who knows, maybe we've had the chance to be present at the onset of an unlikely romance, something from a movie, a "cute meet" they call it, and can go back to what we'd been doing, our consciences, such as they are, absolved for once, at peace.
相关单词：handout
handout解释：n.散发的文字材料；救济品
handout例句：
I read the handout carefully.我仔细看了这份分发的资料。
His job was distributing handout at the street-corner.他的工作是在街头发传单。
相关单词：aisle
aisle解释：n.（教堂、教室、戏院等里的）过道，通道
aisle例句：
The aisle was crammed with people.过道上挤满了人。
The girl ushered me along the aisle to my seat.引座小姐带领我沿着通道到我的座位上去。
相关单词：lark
lark解释：n.云雀，百灵鸟；n.嬉戏，玩笑；vi.嬉戏
lark例句：
He thinks it cruel to confine a lark in a cage.他认为把云雀关在笼子里太残忍了。
She lived in the village with her grandparents as cheerful as a lark.她同祖父母一起住在乡间非常快活。
相关单词：onset
onset解释：n.进攻，袭击，开始，突然开始
onset例句：
The drug must be taken from the onset of the infection.这种药必须在感染的最初期就开始服用。
Our troops withstood the onset of the enemy.我们的部队抵挡住了敌人的进攻。
相关单词：absolved
absolved解释：宣告…无罪，赦免…的罪行，宽恕…的罪行( absolve的过去式和过去分词 )； 不受责难，免除责任 [义务] ,开脱（罪责）
absolved例句：
The court absolved him of all responsibility for the accident. 法院宣告他对该事故不负任何责任。
The court absolved him of guilt in her death. 法庭赦免了他在她的死亡中所犯的罪。
