“I’ll help what’s left of him to bed,” I heard her tell Dad, “while you get the scoop shovel and clean up.”
CHAPTER V
BUTCH MC’GINTY
I almost died. But when I got all ready to do it, sort of, with Dad flying around like a rooster with its head cut off and Mother rubbing my stomach with a hot cloth that looked to me like an old woolen petticoat, Doc Leland bustled into the house with his pill case, out of which he mixed up some dope that did the miracle, as the saying is. And how wonderful it was to know, in the relief that Doc’s pills and a hot-water bottle brought to me, that I was going to have the chance, after all, of helping Poppy run the Pickle Parlor.
“Let this be a lesson to you,” lectured Doc, oggling me through his big nose glasses, “an’ don’t make a pig of yourself the next time you happen to sneak up on an unchaperoned pickle dish.”
“Pickles!” I gagged ... and you should have seen Dad jump for the basin! “I never want to eat another pickle as long as I live.”
Poppy, the big monkey, came in the next morning with a hunk of cauliflower tied up in fancy ribbons like a sick-room bouquet.
“When you get through with it,” he grinned, “your ma can pickle it.”
“Stop!” I shuddered. “Talk of anything else but pickles.”
“Say, Jerry,” he earnestly leaned over the bed, “I’ve got some news for you. We had a burglar in our house last night.”
“What?” I cried, staring at him.