Poor me! The wonder is that I escaped without a broken neck. For that old girl sure could swat. As for Poppy, he never cracked a smile.
“Oof!” he gagged, when we were in the street. “I’m not surprised that you turned up your nose. For my part I almost turned up my toes. The worst pickles that I ever tasted in all my life.”
“I’m beginning to wonder,” says I wearily, when the street quit spinning around and around, “if we’ll ever be able to find this wonderful pickle maker.”
“We’ve got to,” says he. “For if we don’t our Pickle Parlor will be a fizzle. As I told you yesterday, the people will come to our store to buy better pickles. But we can’t hope to attract them with ordinary pickles.”
“Some of the pickles I’ve tasted to-day would kill a nanny goat with a cast-iron stomach.”
“Which should make us realize all the more,” says Poppy, “how popular our Pickle Parlor will be when we get properly organized.”
I thought of something.
“Did you ever read the book about Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde?” I inquired.
“Why do you ask that?” he looked at me curiously.
“Well, Dr. Jekyl got hold of a drug that changed him into Mr. Hyde, and then Mr. Hyde used another drug that changed him back into Dr. Jekyl. Everything was going along fine and dandy until the drug supply ran out. Dr. Jekyl couldn’t find any more drugs with the right kind of stuff in them, which proved to him that the original drugs were a sort of accident. It may be the same with this one jar of pickles.”