“No. President.”
“What?” I squeaked. Yet, knowing him so well, I shouldn’t have been surprised.
He dropped down beside me.
“It’s funny, Jerry,” says he, “what queer ideas a fellow gets about big business men. I always pictured a railroad president as a towering, square-shouldered, high-pressure man with a foghorn voice and sixteen jumping secretaries. But Mr. Lorrimer wasn’t that kind of a man at all. In fact, when I found out that he was the president of the railroad you could have knocked me over with a feather. And did I ever feel silly for a minute or two! For I had been razzing his pickles.”
I didn’t get that.
“We were in the dining car,” Poppy then explained more fully. “Me on one side of the small table and little snappy eyes on the other side. I noticed that the waiters gave him a lot of attention. But, as I say, I never dreamed that he was the president of the railroad. Looked to me more like the proprietor of a peanut stand, or something like that. We talked back and forth. Then some cucumber pickles were brought in. They weren’t much, I said, thinking of our own swell pickles. That kind of ruffled little what’s-his-name. I had to tell him then who I was, after which he sent the waiter to get my sample case. Then, finding that my pickles were everything that I had claimed for them, he called in another man, who turned out to be the food buyer for the railroad. ‘Samson,’ says he, ‘this boy has something we need in connection with our dining-car service. Look into his proposition, please. And see what can be done.’”
“And then,” says I, anticipating the story’s ending, “is when the big order was shoved at you, huh?”
“I got an order,” he nodded. “But it wasn’t so very big. Only six ten-gallon kegs.”
I searched his face.
“But you said in the bank that you had sold our entire stock.”