A BUSY DAY
“The mistake 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’s _Globe_,” wrote a woman on
Oak Street. “I can easily identify my jar of pickles. My husband,
who doubts the 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 diamonds _in_ the cucumbers, or just
in the bottom of the jar? I’m wondering if I actually pickled jeweled
cucumbers! Yet how _could_ the 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 she _had_
sent pickles to a number of her church-going neighbors. And so at sight
of our ad her first thought was that possibly the 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 of people 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 the _boys_,” corrected Poppy, which shows what kind of a pal
_he_ is. 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 the _fairest_ and _squarest_ pal 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. The second 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. And _that_ and _that_.”
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 it help 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.”