"What do you want?"
"I am from Dawson Black's—"
"Oh, I know all about that. We don't want any pencil sharpeners. Didn't the boy tell you?"
"Yes, but—"
"Then what the devil are you waiting for?"
I gulped and replied, "Nothing." He turned and walked away.
Let me confess it. I was afraid of him! I hate to admit it, but I was. I went down the stairs, feeling like a naughty boy who had been spanked—and yet he was altogether in the wrong! That little experience gave me a lot of sympathy for traveling salesmen, and also made me realize that those salesmen who called on me were bigger men than I was. And I realized that Dunn was a bigger man than I was, in spite of his rudeness. I could no more have answered his insolence, the way Downs answered mine, than I could have flown to the moon.
That reception knocked most of the heart out of me, and I wasn't very cheerful when I called on Blickens, the president of the bank. I picked him out because I figured that, at least, he would be civil to me.
When I told him what I had come for, he said:
"We have several of those around here, but—send one around." He put his hand in his pocket and passed me a dollar bill. I thanked him and retired, but I knew in my heart that he didn't want one, and that he had given me the order just to get rid of me, without offending me or hurting my feelings, because I was a depositor in the bank. I felt like a panhandler.