For his eyes showed it.

“I dare say you would,” he nodded. “Which is all the more reason why you’re deserving of any help that I can give you. No, you needn’t say any more about it. The playhouse is yours to take or leave, as you see fit. As for moving it onto my lot, if you decide to do that you can pay me five dollars a month.”

“Only five dollars a month for the whole business?” cried Poppy. “That isn’t enough. We expect to make a lot of money when we get organized. And I don’t think it’s right for us to fill our own pockets and not pay you what we should.”

“Possibly,” came the dry suggestion, “you would like to take me into partnership with you.”

“Hot dog!” cried Poppy.

“Very well,” the old man gravely accepted the honor. “You may call me your ‘silent’ partner, if you wish. Which means that you’re to run the business as you see fit and I’m to look on. As for sharing in the profits, I’ll take my pay in pickles.”

“So many pickles as that?” Poppy looked his surprise.

“Oh,” came dryly, “it may not be so terribly many. Probably not more than two or three quarts a month at the most.”

[27]

CHAPTER III WHOSE PICKLES

“What’s luckier than the left-hand foot of a tongue-tied graveyard rabbit?” says I to Poppy, when our “silent” partner had gone into the house to eat his dinner.

What’s

I thought at first that old long-face wasn’t going to answer me, so busy was he building shelves and counters in his mind. But finally it percolated into his crowded cranium that I had asked him a question.

“What?” says he, deciding that shelf number six was a trifle too high and that the wrapping counter needed to be shoved a thirty-second of an inch to the left.

“A cat in a cistern,” says I.

“Cuckoo!” was his lack of appreciation of my cleverness.

“I’m not talking about ‘cuckoos,’” I threw back at 

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