him. “I’m talking about cats—k-a-t-z, cats. And the point is, that if Mr. Weckler’s tomcat hadn’t skidded into a convenient cistern, thus giving you a chance to do the hero stuff, our Pickle[28] Parlor might have cut its baby teeth in a dry-goods box instead of a juvenile bungalow. Hence the good luck to us, as I say. Oh, you needn’t look so disgusted,” I began to spar at him, “or the first thing you know I’ll show you how easy a vice-president can take a mere president down and rub dirt on the end of his nose.”

[28]

“Shut up,” he laughed, “I’m busy.”

“Don’t take it so seriously, Poppy,” I further kept at him. “For this isn’t a morgue—it’s a Pickle Parlor.”

“To listen to you,” was the nice little hunk of flattery that he shoved at me, “anyone would think it was a lunatic asylum.”

I picked off some of his high-falutin’ oratory.

“Poppy’s petrified pickles,” I swept the air with my arms. “The perfect pickles with a puckery past; the quicker you eat them the shorter you last.” Then I let out a yip. “Look me over, kid,” I strutted around. “I’m a real poet.”

“Yah, a poet ... but you don’t know it.”

“Say, Poppy?”

“Well, what now?”

“Have you got your private office picked out yet?”

“Sure thing,” he grinned. “It’s on the ninth floor.”

“Toot! Toot!” says I, pretending that I was an[29] elevator. “Anybody going up to the president’s office?” Then I took a lath that lay on the floor and smacked old doo-funny a sharp crack on the seat of the pants. “Look out!” I staggered, pretending this time that my arms were loaded full. “I just dropped a jar of pickled carpet tacks.”

[29]

Poppy and I fool around that way a lot. It’s kid stuff, I know. And kind of silly. But in a way it bears out that old saying of Dad’s: Every day a little fun and a little business.

Having completed the 

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