“Which reminds me,” says I, “that you haven’t told me yet where you’re going to get these wonderful pickles.”

“That,” says he, with a thoughtful look, “is still a puzzle to me.”

“Good night!” I squeaked, with much the same feeling as though, having skidded off the moon, I[15] had landed kerflop! on the hard earth. “It’s a good thing, I guess, that they didn’t make us a special offer on that store. For we’d look cute trying to run a Pickle Parlor without any pickles.”

[15]

[16]

CHAPTER II OUR “SILENT” PARTNER

“Our business career was kind of short and snappy,” I told Poppy, when we had turned a corner out of sight of the Canners Exchange Bank where our enemy, Forrest Pennykorn, had just given us the horselaugh.

Our

“How do you get that ‘was’ stuff?” says he. “We really haven’t got started yet.”

I had known, of course, that he would say something like that. For when he starts out to do a thing he usually sticks to it until he finishes it. That’s the kind of a kid he is. But I pretended that I was surprised.

“What?” I squeaked, as we ran into a jam of people in front of the Parker grocery where a sale was going on. “Haven’t you given up that scheme?”

There was a crash of glass on the concrete sidewalk.

“My pickles!” cried one of the shoppers, glaring at poor Poppy as though she was mad enough to snatch him bald-headed. “Stupid! Why don’t you watch where you’re going?”

[17]The offender, of course, had an apology a mile long. Then, in his quick-minded way, he got down on his knees and began fingering the pickled cucumbers as they lay in a puddle of juice on the sidewalk, acting for all the world as though he were conducting a pickle post-mortem, or whatever you call it.

[17]

“Mrs. Clayton,” he finally looked up with a long face, “you may not realize it, but this accident is nothing short of an act of Providence. And while it may seem to you that you have suffered a loss, you really are going to be benefited. The very fact that you made this purchase proves that you are a lover of good pickles. I say good pickles, for, as a pickle specialist, I can see that you bought 

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