“To the Stove-poker Parlor,” says I, tickled over my own smartness.
“Be serious.”
“Well,” I complied generously, “I might try the ten-cent store.”
“But a stove poker is hardware. So, if your argument holds good, ought you not to go to a hardware store?”
“Tra-la-la,” says I. “Isn’t it a beautiful day.”
“The point is,” says he, “that people will buy hardware in a novelty store, or, for that matter, anything in any kind of a store, if you make it an object for them to do so.”
“Anyway,” says I, yawning, “running a store is a man’s job. So that lets us out.”
But he was as unmoved as though he were the hill of Gibraltar itself, or whatever you call it.
“Of course,” he reflected, referring to the suggested partnership, “it will be a fifty-fifty proposition.”
Seeing that it was useless to argue with him further, I sort of resigned myself to my fate as his pickle partner.