CHAPTER IVA BUSY DAY
“Themistake that our proof reader made in your ad,” the newspaper editor admitted to us the following morning, “was nothing short of downright carelessness. Still,” he laughed, handing us six letters, “it doesn’t seem to have done you any harm.”
It was explained to us then just how the mistake had occurred. Right beside our ad in the newspaper “form” was an article telling about a jewelry-store robbery. A line in this article had to be reset on the linotype machine. And in making the correction the proof reader got the new “slug,” as the line of type was called, into the middle of our ad instead of in the robbery article, where it belonged.
Having been told by the editor that he would print the corrected ad free of charge, we thanked him and hurried out of the newspaper office, stopping at the first corner to see who our six letters were from.
“I saw your advertisement in to-night’sGlobe,” wrote a woman on Oak Street. “I can easily identify my jar of pickles. My husband, who doubtsthe truth of the advertisement, says, anyhow, that it couldn’t have been our pickles in which the diamonds were found, for we never owned a diamond in all our lives except my engagement ring. Nevertheless, I would like to know for sure that mine isn’t the lucky jar.”
The next letter was from a woman by the name of Mrs. Hiram Springer.
“My attention was called this evening to your current advertising in our local newspaper. I certainly can’t say that the diamonds are mine, granting that your story of finding them is true, for I never owned but one small diamond. Were the diamondsinthe cucumbers, or just in the bottom of the jar? I’m wondering if I actually pickled jeweled cucumbers! Yet howcouldthe diamonds have gotten into the cucumbers? But tell me, please, what you know. And I’m hoping, of course, that it was in my jar that the diamonds were found.”
While it turned out that a lot of the women who wrote to us never had contributed pickles to the food sale, it isn’t to be thought of them that they tried to cheat. Take the case of Mrs. Cook on South Main Street. She hadn’t given the church people any pickles. But shehadsent pickles to a number of her church-going neighbors. And so at sight of our ad her first thought was that possiblythe diamonds, which could have been in the green cucumbers, though not without mystery, had turned up in one of these scattered jars. Naturally, if such was the case she intended to press her claim. Another woman having had some pickles sent to her by an eccentric country relative jumped to the excited conclusion that “rich Aunt Hattie,” as the relative was called, had put the diamonds into the pickle jar as a pleasing surprise. Some canned fruit had been stolen from her cellar, and how logical, was her quick conclusion, that a jar of “Aunt Hattie’s pickles” had thus peculiarly found its way into the hands of the church people! You can see from this why so many letters had been written to us. No one who had any possible chance of laying claim to the diamonds stood idly by. For nothing was to be lost by writing; and there was a chance of great gain.
As we had to have pickles before we could open up our business, it was of more importance, Poppy said, to find out who the lucky pickle maker was than to finish painting our store, so, after a hurried trip to Mr. Weckler’s house, to see if the paint was drying, we headed for 616 Elm Street to interview the first one of the six women who had written to us.
Mrs. Morgan was very eager to let us into her house when she found out that we had her letter.But she got rid of us in a hurry when she learned the truth about the “diamonds.” I couldn’t see, though, what right she had to get out of patience with us and accuse us of trickery. But that just goes to show how unreasonable some people can be.
Our next stop was at Mrs. Hempline’s house, where we were given much better treatment. Yes, was the cheerful, even eager admission, she had contributed pickles to the food sale. But we found on sampling her pickles that we were in the wrong house.
“Gosh!” says I, when we hit the street. “Did you see the look on her face when we backed out of the house? I bet anything she thinks we’re cuckoo.”
“How could she think different,” grinned Poppy, “with you along?”
The balance of our calls were no more successful than the first two. Of the six women, three had contributed pickles to the food sale. But the pickles that we sampled weren’t the pickles that we were looking for. In fact, at one house the pickles were no good at all. They tasted to me as though they had been put up in dish water.
“Hey!” a kid called to us across the street. “Mr. Stair wants to see you.”
Hurrying to the newspaper office, we were given fourteen more letters and a telegram.
“Evidently,” grinned the editor, “there’s a lot ofpeople hereabouts who want to wear diamonds.” Then he looked at us curiously. “By the way,” he inquired, “what was it that you found in the pickles?”
“An idea,” says Poppy.
“But you said it was something of great value.”
“The right kind of an idea,” says Poppy, “is frequently worth a lot of money.”
“If it’s news ...” came the hint.
“I hope it will be big news some day,” says Poppy, thinking of a new factory. “But I can’t tell you about it now.”
The editor continued to regard us curiously.
“I understand that you boys are going to start up a pickle store.”
“A Pickle Parlor,” came the polite correction.
The newspaper man laughed.
“Pickles? A Pickle Parlor? Evidently,” he used his head, “this ‘big idea’ of yours has something to do with pickles.”
“If you were to guess for the next thousand years,” grinned Poppy, “you couldn’t guess any closer than that.”
“Aren’t you the boy,” the man’s eyes then showed their admiration, “who brought the stilt idea to town?”
“We’re theboys,” corrected Poppy, which shows what kind of a palheis. Yes, sir, as I’ve said before,when the angels were putting old Poppy together they dumped in an extra gob of fairness. And then to sort of balance things they put in another extra gob of squareness, with the result that he’s thefairestandsquarestpal I ever had or ever hope to have if I live a million years.
“Wire collect complete detailed description of diamonds,” our telegram read. And when we saw that it was signed by the Peoria chief of police you could have sliced off our eyes with a baseball bat.
“Wow!” says Poppy. “This is getting kind of complicated.”
I have no better grown-up friend in all Tutter than Bill Hadley, the town marshal. So we went to him to find out what we should do about the telegram. Billy had a good laugh when he heard of our predicament. We weren’t to worry about the telegram, he said. He’d take care of that matter for us.
“Evidently,” was his opinion, “there’s been a diamond robbery down in Peoria, an’ that’s why the chief wants a description of your diamonds.”
“What if we get more such telegrams from Chicago and other cities?” says Poppy.
“Just bring ’em to me.”
We put in the whole morning and the biggest part of the afternoon following up the letters that were mailed to us through the newspaper office. Thesecond batch of letters brought us no more success than the first six. At noon we were handed more. Twenty-six this trip. Can you imagine! We called on short women, tall women, young women, old women, pretty women, cross-looking women, skinny women, fat women, women who had lost their husbands, and a few who still were wishing. For by three o’clock a total of fifty-four letters had been received at the newspaper office. We sampled so many pickles that they began to stick out of our eyes. Toward the last the sight of a pickle made me gag. And this, by the way, got us into trouble. For one woman caught me turning up my nose at her pickles and landed on me with a broom.
“I’ll teach you to ask me for pickles and then turn up your nose at them behind my back,” she screeched. “Take that, you young whippersnapper. Andthatandthat.”
Poor me! The wonder is that I escaped without a broken neck. For that old girl sure could swat. As for Poppy, he never cracked a smile.
“Oof!” he gagged, when we were in the street. “I’m not surprised that you turned up your nose. For my part I almost turned up my toes. The worst pickles that I ever tasted in all my life.”
“I’m beginning to wonder,” says I wearily, when the street quit spinning around and around, “if we’ll ever be able to find this wonderful pickle maker.”
“We’ve got to,” says he. “For if we don’t our Pickle Parlor will be a fizzle. As I told you yesterday, the people will come to our store to buy better pickles. But we can’t hope to attract them with ordinary pickles.”
“Some of the pickles I’ve tasted to-day would kill a nanny goat with a cast-iron stomach.”
“Which should make us realize all the more,” says Poppy, “how popular our Pickle Parlor will be when we get properly organized.”
I thought of something.
“Did you ever read the book about Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde?” I inquired.
“Why do you ask that?” he looked at me curiously.
“Well, Dr. Jekyl got hold of a drug that changed him into Mr. Hyde, and then Mr. Hyde used another drug that changed him back into Dr. Jekyl. Everything was going along fine and dandy until the drug supply ran out. Dr. Jekyl couldn’t find any more drugs with the right kind of stuff in them, which proved to him that the original drugs were a sort of accident. It may be the same with this one jar of pickles.”
“That isn’t impossible,” says Poppy, “but I’m not going to let myself believe it.”
By the time I got home there were things going on in my stomach that weren’t right. Nor did ithelp matters any when I tried to hold down the celebrating pickles with mashed potatoes and gravy.
Mother beamed at me across the supper table.
“Have some pickles,” says she generously.
“No!” I cried, with a shudder. Pickles! The last thing I wanted was more pickles.
“Why, Jerry! What’s the matter with you? You look white.”
Dad glanced up from his newspaper.
“Too much candy, I bet a cookie. You shouldn’t eat so much sweet stuff, Son,” he lectured. “You’re getting too big for that.” Then, what do you know if he didn’t shove a second dish of pickles at me! “Here, try something sour for a change. It’ll do your stomach good.”
Pickles! Suddenly I was caught in a whirl of pickles. Mixed pickles! Pear pickles! Apple pickles! Cucumber pickles! String-bean pickles! Peach pickles! Tomato pickles! They came at me with blood in their eyes. I tried to run. But I couldn’t get away from them. Biff! The cucumber pickles soaked me a sledge-hammer blow on the end of the snout, while at the same time the string-bean pickles lifted up the tail of my coat and performed with perfect aim. Again I tried to run, but they got in front of me and cut me off. When I fell they landed on top of me. I saw I was a goner. And then—
Sort of coming back to earth, as it were, I found Mother steadying me.
“I’ll help what’s left of him to bed,” I heard her tell Dad, “while you get the scoop shovel and clean up.”