“It can’t be any worse than the rotten pickles,” I grinned. “So spit it out.”
“Last Thursday when I was in Rockford, my cousin, who works in a wholesale grocery store, took me down to the office to meet the boss. Our talk was mostly about cucumber pickles. Mr. Wiggins was very much interested in our new pickle business. I spread a lot of gab, I guess. And what do you know if I didn’t talk him into giving me an order for two thirty-gallon barrels! Being Henny’s cousin helped, I suppose. Anyway, whether it was that or just my line of gab, I got the order. Boy, did I ever feel big! If we could sell barreled pickles to him, my imagination began to jump around, why couldn’t we sell them by the barrel to other wholesalers? I was sure that we could. And so that we would have plenty of cucumbers to work on, and thus be able to fill the whopping big pickle orders that we were going to get, I telegraphed to Mrs. O’Mally, telling her that we’d buy her whole cucumber crop.”
“What?” I squeaked, staring at him.
“At two dollars a bushel.”
It was so much worse than what I had expected that I lost my voice. I could only stare. Finally, though, I got my voice back again, after a lot of gurgling and neck-stretching. I tightened up my wabbly legs, too. And remembering that he was my best pal regardless, I shoved out a fumbling paw.
“Poppy,” says I, wondering what made it so blamed hot all of a sudden, “since I’ve known you you’ve made some beau-tiful high dives. But this is one time, kid, when you sure landed flat on your little tummy. Seven hundred bushels of cucumbers at two dollars a bushel! Wow!” I drew a deep breath. Boy, it sure was hot! “But it’s you and me, kid,” I went on, pumping his arm up and down, with the sweat running. “That’s the way we started; and that’s the way we’re going to finish.” Then I tried to be enthusiastic. “Anyway,” says I, “who knows but what we may be able to think up a scheme for making cucumber watch charms or fancy green doo-dads for ladies’ hats? So don’t start twiddling your thumbs now, old hunk. Use your beezer. It looks just as good to me as it ever did ... on the outside. And if you can’t get action any other way, swallow a bumblebee.”
We were walking slower now.
“What are we going to tell Mrs. O’Mally?” says he, looking ahead.
“Why not wait and see what she tells us?”
“But suppose she asks us for money?”