“What?” I squeaked, as we ran into a jam of people in front of the Parker grocery where a sale was going on. “Haven’t you given up that scheme?”
There was a crash of glass on the concrete sidewalk.
“My pickles!” cried one of the shoppers, glaring at poor Poppy as though she was mad enough to snatch him bald-headed. “Stupid! Why don’t you watch where you’re going?”
The offender, of course, had an apology a mile long. Then, in his quick-minded way, he got down on his knees and began fingering the pickled cucumbers as they lay in a puddle of juice on the sidewalk, acting for all the world as though he were conducting a pickle post-mortem, or whatever you call it.
“Mrs. Clayton,” he finally looked up with a long face, “you may not realize it, but this accident is nothing short of an act of Providence. And while it may seem to you that you have suffered a loss, you really are going to be benefited. The very fact that you made this purchase proves that you are a lover of good pickles. I say good pickles, for, as a pickle specialist, I can see that you bought the best pickles that the store had. Probably they are fairly good pickles, as pickles go. Because I am in the pickle business myself is no reason why I should run down anybody else’s pickles. Yet, on the other hand, I feel that I have a right to uphold the superior quality of my own pickles. And it is of such pickles that I am going to make good your loss. Not store pickles, Mrs. Clayton, as we usually accept the term, but home-made pickles, of which the more you eat the more you want; pickles that you never tire of; pickles with the lasting, lingering taste; pickles with a skin you love to touch; pickles,” the orator soared, like a rooster flopping over a fence, “that please but never pucker. A wonderful treat is in store for you. And once you have been initiated into the dinner-time joys of perfect pickles, I hope you’ll remember me, not as a blundering boy who bumped into you by accident, to the loss of your bottle of store pickles, but as the hand of Providence that led you into the light. Poppy’s Pickle Parlor! Easy to remember, isn’t it? If you’ll say it over two or three times you’ll never forget it. Poppy’s Pickle Parlor! Which is all to the point, Mrs. Clayton, that whenever you are in need of pickles, the place to buy them, if you want the best, is at Poppy’s Pickle Parlor, the home of perfect pickles.”
Well, say! I never felt so foolish in all my life. Poppy is all right. He is a smart kid, in fact. And no doubt this new scheme of his was water tight. But it struck me that he was spreading the gab too promiscuously. Enough people would laugh at us, I figured, without him making a monkey of himself (and me, too!) in public.
“The first thing you know,” I hinted, when we had escaped from the laughing crowd that had gathered around us as a result of the free show, “they’ll be locking you up in a padded cell.”
“What’s the matter, Jerry?” he grinned, in perfect contentment with himself. “Don’t you like my lingo?”
“You can’t keep it up,” I told him, “and get away with it.”
“It’s good advertising,” he modestly bragged on himself.