“Shut up,” he laughed, “I’m busy.”

“Don’t take it so seriously, Poppy,” I further kept at him. “For this isn’t a morgue—it’s a Pickle Parlor.”

“To listen to you,” was the nice little hunk of flattery that he shoved at me, “anyone would think it was a lunatic asylum.”

I picked off some of his high-falutin’ oratory.

“Poppy’s petrified pickles,” I swept the air with my arms. “The perfect pickles with a puckery past; the quicker you eat them the shorter you last.” Then I let out a yip. “Look me over, kid,” I strutted around. “I’m a real poet.”

“Yah, a poet ... but you don’t know it.”

“Say, Poppy?”

“Well, what now?”

“Have you got your private office picked out yet?”

“Sure thing,” he grinned. “It’s on the ninth floor.”