A Summary of “The Umbrella Man” The narrator was a 12-year-old girl. She learned a lesson that we shouldn’t trust the appearances when judging someone. It was raining heavily in the evening when the girl and her mother got out on the street and was about to go home, but they had no umbrella and couldn’t find a vacant taxi. Just then, an old man came to ask for a favor. The mother was very suspicious and acted arrogantly, about which the girl felt embarrassed. The old man explained that every day he went for a long walk and summoned a taxi home because his legs were very painful. He had left his wallet at home and wanted his 20-pounds-worth silk umbrella in exchange for one pound. The mother tended to agree with the deal, for the old man was so polite, well-spoken, well-dressed, and was careless about money. But she noticed that her daughter was telling her not to take advantage of the old tired man by a frosty-nosed look. Although the mother proposed to offer one pound in exchange for nothing, the man insisted to give the umbrella to them. The mother praised him as a real gentleman, and told the girl not to rush to judge a person by his appearance. However, later on they saw the man crossing the street with a terrific hurry and decided to follow him to find out the truth. The man made many turns and finally got into a pub. They watched that he went towards the bar and paid one pound for a treble whiskey, from which they thought the unfair deal was very ridiculous. Then he went back, but surprisingly, he lifted one of those wet umbrellas on the clothes hanger, in a casual and unnoticed manner. They observed that the man went back to the street and exchanged the umbrella for another one pound without trouble and went into another pub in the opposite direction. They finally knew that it was very clever of the man to play this super little