“When I was comin’ by Miz O’Mally’s farm I stopped in, to git a peek at her patch. An’ your man out thar—the one with the whiskers—said if I’d bring my cucumbers here, an’ stand by you in your scheme of buckin’ the cannin’ company, you’d pay me two dollars a bushel. So here they be.”
I started to argue with him. I tried to tell him that Uncle Abner had no right to buy the cucumbers. As it was, I said, we had a hundred times more cucumbers than we could use. But I might just as well have shoved my gab at a brick wall. He unloaded the cucumbers right there in front of my eyes. A pile as high as my head! No wonder a sweating pickle maker fainted dead away when she groped her way out of the kitchen for a breath of fresh air and saw what was ahead of her.
I don’t know what I told the farmer. He declared afterwards that I said we’d pay him at the end of the week. Anyway, he drove off. And there I was! Nor could I wire Poppy to come home and help me. For I didn’t know whether he was in Joliet or Peoria, though, to that point, I expected a letter from him in the afternoon mail which undoubtedly would contain his address.
Down the street two more cucumber wagons had come into sight, and hearing a buzz of excited voices in the church basement, as the recovering fainter began talking, I decided that the best thing for me to do was to dig out.
“Say, Jerry,” Tom told me, when I dragged myself wearily into the Pickle Parlor, “Mr. Pennykorn wants to see you.”
“What?” I stared in amazement.
“He stopped in here a few minutes ago. Talked as nice as pie, too. So you better run over and find out what he’s got up his sleeve.”
“Yah,” I sweat, “and get my beezer knocked off. Bu-lieve me, I know that old bird, all right.”
“Shucks! He wouldn’t dare to lay a finger on you even if he wanted to. You ought to know that.”
The last time I had talked with Mr. Pennykorn his eyes had blazed with hatred. But now, on meeting him in his office, he purred over me like an old pussy cat.