In calling the banker an old liar I was thinking, of course, of the business conversation we had overheard in the bank. Not only was the new pickle line a whopping big success, if we were to believe what we had heard, but convinced that this success would keep up, and steadily grow bigger, the company, as we knew, had already made plans to start up a separate pickle factory in Ashton. And here he was letting on to Mrs. O’Mally, in his smooth, oily way, that her cucumbers would be a drag on his hands. Just to get more wealth!
Money is bully good stuff to have. When I grow up I’m going to earn a lot of it and get a lot of fun out of it. But, bu-lieve me, if I ever try to earn a penny by cheating another person—least of all a poor old woman—I hope somebody with decency will meander into sight and crack me a good one on the back of the bean.
So, having separated myself from this little spiel, you know what I thought about Mr. Foreman Pennykorn!
And not a bit sorry was I now that we had the big cucumber crop on our hands, though, as I have written down, when Poppy first sprung the news on me I had taken it as a sort of calamity. It would be fun to turn the cucumbers into money under the banker’s very nose. I hadn’t any idea how we were going to do it. But I had the fighting feeling, all of a sudden, that we could do it. Old skin-flint, as Mrs. O’Mally called him. We’d fix him.
“’Tis glad I am to hear ye say, Mr. Pennykorn,” the pickle woman went on with the conversation, “that ye would like to have me sell me cucumbers where I can get the best price for ’em.”
“Not for one minute, Mrs. O’Mally, would we want to stand in your way,” purred the old fraud, who, of course, was chuckling inside over the smug thought that his factory was the only market that the cucumber raiser had. “For we always want to do what is right and fair to all. That is our policy. Sometimes the farmers think our prices are too low. But it is a fact that we always pay as much as we can. Yet, I know how the farmers feel. Money is money to all of us. And I dare say that a hundred dollars means even more to a poor person, and particularly to an old lady like you, than to a struggling business such as ours.”
A “struggling business!” And he and his son had talked of “cleaning up” fifty thousand dollars in this one year alone! Of all the two-faced old skunks!
“An’ how much was it that the seven hundred bushels would bring me at ninety cents a bushel?” Mrs. O’Mally inquired.
“Six hundred and thirty dollars.”
“An’ it would honestly please ye, ye say, to know that I could sell me cucumber crop for more than that?”