As Mr. Ott had decided to stay in Rockford for a few days, which left Poppy alone, I had him go home with me to dinner. Mother was all excited. Half of the town was sick, she said. Since his first call at midnight, Doc Leland hadn’t had time to draw an extra breath.
“What is it?” says Poppy. “Some kind of an epidemic?”
“Ptomaine poisoning, as I understand it.”
Poppy and I put in the afternoon at the store. And still no customers. We couldn’t understand it. Was the scheme all wrong? It would seem so. Still, we hung on, how could it be wrong?
“Maybe,” I suggested, “we ought to sort of go out and look for customers instead of waiting for them to come to us.”
“Just what do you mean by that?” says he.
“We might be able to sell a pile of pickles if we went from house to house.”
That was well worth trying, he agreed. So, leaving him to run the store, I started out with a loaded market basket on my arm.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Brown,” says I at the first house. “You probably remember me,” I beamed.
“Yes,” she snapped. “I remember you well.”