This was on Saturday. Nothing happened on Sunday. And on Monday the pickle maker took the cucumbers out of the brine and soaked them in different changes of fresh water. I never dreamed that you had to give a cucumber so many different kinds of baths before it was a pickle—my idea was that you put the cucumbers on the stove to cook and when they had cooked an hour or two they were pickles. But Butch seemed to know his business. So, much as we hated to let the work drag along, we didn’t try any hurry-up stuff with him.
On Tuesday he had us buy a whole list of stuff—alum, sugar, cider vinegar, celery seed, allspice and stick cinnamon. And don’t imagine, either, that we bought a dime’s worth of each, or anything like that. I guess not! The junk cost us exactly eleven dollars and forty-five cents.
To put the Tutter people wise to how good our pickles were, Poppy had worked out a sample scheme, and having for this purpose bought three hundred drug-store bottles, just big enough to hold four pickles each with the cucumbers packed on end, he and I were deep in the job of washing and scalding these bottles when who should come into the house on the tear but old Mr. Ott.
“Poppy,” he says, ripping off his coat and giving it a throw, “why didn’t you remind me that this is the day?”
“What day?” says Poppy in surprise. “What do you mean?”
“Why, this is the Thursday my nepher in Rockford gits married. An’ to git there in time fur the weddin’ we’ve got to catch the eleven o’clock train. So hurry, now, as it’s twenty minutes to eleven already.”
“Oh, gee, Pa!” Poppy objected to being dragged away from his beloved pickles. “Do I have to go?”
“You most certainly do. Fur they asked me special to bring you along.”
“But I ought to stay and help Jerry. For see the work there is to do.”
“Go git your Sunday clothes on like I tell you an’ quit arguin’ with me. Fur Henny is the only nepher I’ve got. So it’s our family duty to be there when he gits hitched up.”