“It won’t cost much,” I grinned, “to move this house.”

“Probably not. But we won’t get the job done for nothing. How about putting in fifty dollars apiece?”

That was all right with me, I agreed. Then, as the lodge saying is, we adjourned, stretching our legs in the direction of home, having been reminded by the one o’clock factory whistles that we hadn’t had dinner yet. Later we met in Mr. Thomas Lorring’s bank where we opened a hundred-dollar checking account in the name of Poppy’s Pickle Parlor, after which we ordered our lumber and paint, not forgetting to put an ad in the Tutter Daily Globe.

Mr. Lorring, you will remember, was the banker who helped us start up our stilt factory, out of which we made several hundred dollars. He sure used us fine. And that is why we went back to him.

Poppy is a regular little gee whizz when it comes to sawing and fitting. Boy, you should have seen the way those shelves danced into place! I ran a race with him, slinging yellow and green paint right and left, but he beat me by a mile. Still, if I could have added to the paint that I put on the[33] store what I got on the old overalls that Mr. Weckler had so wisely provided, I guess the race would have been a tie.

[33]

Throughout our afternoon’s work the old man pottered here and there, silently taking in everything with a critical, interested eye. Mrs. Clayton, too, came out to see how we were getting along, bringing a big pitcher of lemonade. Um-yum! The best lemonade I ever tasted. Having lapped up two or three quarts, more or less, my painting speed increased thirty-eight strokes to the minute.

People living in small towns usually keep pretty close tab on their neighbors. So, after Poppy’s two wild “pickle” spiels, first in the bank and again in front of the Parker grocery, it soon got noised about that a new local business was about to blossom forth. A Pickle Parlor! Kids who heard what we were doing came and rubbered at us over the fence that inclosed Mr. Weckler’s neglected garden. And older friends of ours smiled at us when they met us in the street. The general opinion was, as I had told Poppy in the beginning, that such a store would fizzle out for want of business. Of course, there was a “secret” side to our plans that our friends didn’t know about. And, to that point, I was to learn later on that my brainy partner had still other dope in his head that he hadn’t dished out to me. Not for one instant had it occurred to me that something[34] bigger and better equipped than an ordinary 

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