“Jerry,” came solemnly, “do you know what I wish?”
“That you could coax him into an alley and punch his face?”
“Oh, no! I wish I could make him come into our store and beg us to sell him some of our pickles.”
“Which reminds me,” says I, “that you haven’t told me yet where you’re going to get these wonderful pickles.”
“That,” says he, with a thoughtful look, “is still a puzzle to me.”
“Good night!” I squeaked, with much the same feeling as though, having skidded off the moon, I had landed kerflop! on the hard earth. “It’s a good thing, I guess, that they didn’t make us a special offer on that store. For we’d look cute trying to run a Pickle Parlor without any pickles.”
CHAPTER II
OUR “SILENT” PARTNER
“Our business career was kind of short and snappy,” I told Poppy, when we had turned a corner out of sight of the Canners Exchange Bank where our enemy, Forrest Pennykorn, had just given us the horselaugh.
“How do you get that ‘was’ stuff?” says he. “We really haven’t got started yet.”
I had known, of course, that he would say something like that. For when he starts out to do a thing he usually sticks to it until he finishes it. That’s the kind of a kid he is. But I pretended that I was surprised.