"And yet you ain't satisfied—you're asking to be president of a damned railroad—a boy who can eat a strawberry without feeling it!"
He moved on, limping slightly, and like a small persistent devil of temptation, I kept at his elbow.
"Isn't there anything that you can do for me, sir?" I asked, at the point of tears.
"Do for you? Bless my soul, boy, if I had your joints I shouldn't want anything that anybody could do for me. Can't you walk, hop, skip, jump, all you want to?"
This was so manifestly unfair that I retorted stubbornly, "But I don't want to."
He glanced down on me with a flicker of his still charming smile.
"Well, you would if you were president of the Great South Midland and Atlantic and had looked into the evening paper," he said.
"Are you president of it still, sir?"
"Eh? eh? You'll be wanting to push me out of my job next, I suppose?"
"I'd like to have it when you are dead, sir," I replied.