“You seem to like him,” I grunted.
“I feel kind of sorry for him, if you want to know the truth of the matter. For he hates it there. He said so. And for that matter what man with any sense wouldn’t hate to live in a place like that? I’d as soon be in jail myself.”
“His wife must be a regular old rip-snorter,” I laughed.
“She sure has him buffaloed, all right.”
“Some women like to be bossy.... I hope I don’t get that kind.”
“You!” laughed Poppy. “I didn’t know that you were thinking of getting married, Jerry.”
I made a sudden grab for my smeller.
“Phew!” I gurgled. “Whiff that old slaughter-house.”
We learned afterwards that the cluster of rickety buildings set back from the road wasn’t a slaughter-house outfit, as we had supposed, but a rendering works. Old dead cows and horses were brought here to be boiled and then ground up into chicken feed. To judge from the ravishing smell the dead animals were left to ripen in the hot sun for two or three months before they were stuffed into the jaws of the grinding machine.
When we were in the thickest of the lumpy smell, the old snail started to shimmey, as though, with some such feeling as we had, it was getting ready to heave up its mechanical insides. Then it gave a final stagger and dropped dead.