Читать книгу Poppy Ott and the Freckled Goldfish - Edward Edson Lee - Страница 5

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Mrs. Warmley saw us in the yard. And when our shingle-piling job was completed she called us into the kitchen, setting out a treat for us. Two big hunks of chocolate cake. Um-yum!

I now saw what a nice old lady she was. Of course, to that point, she always had been a nice old lady, but, in a way, I had let the neighborhood stories turn me against her. When you feel that way toward people you can’t see much good in them. I had wronged her, of course. And, in consequence, I felt ashamed of myself. Still, I didn’t speak up. A better way of squaring myself, I figured, would be to pitch in and help her.

She was as nice as pie to me, calling me by my front name, which rather surprised me. I didn’t know that she knew me. But her mind, I learned, was as bright as her eyes. And how those eyes did shine when she turned them on old Poppy! I could see how much she cared for him, all right. But don’t get the idea that I was jealous. I guess not. I was tickled to death that this new happiness had come into her sad life. And I was proud of Poppy for returning her affection.

Among other things, she asked us, with a smile, if we had sold many goldfish.

“Not yet,” says Poppy, chasing the last cake crumb around his plate. “But we expect to get started in a day or two.”

“I do hope you’ll have good luck. If you don’t,” her voice changed in tone, “I’m going to find some way of repaying you.”

She tried to hide her nervousness. But we could see, all right, just how she felt.

“Leave it to old Poppy,” I piped up cheerfully. “He could sell cast-iron shoestrings to wooden-legged mermaids.”

“Isn’t he a dear good boy!” the old lady let her affection bubble over. “Now that he has come into my lonely life, I hardly know how I could get along without him.”

“Say, Mrs. Warmley,” the leader looked around the comfortable kitchen, “do you know what I’d do if I were you?”

The bright eyes were attentive.

“I’d put an ad in the newspaper for boarders.”

“Oh, no!” came in quick nervous alarm. “I never would think of doing that. I couldn’t stand the work.”

“But, with board money coming in, you wouldn’t have to work. You could hire help. It really would be easier for you. And you’d always have company in the house.”

“No, no! Please don’t ask me to do that. I don’t mind being alone.”

It hadn’t percolated into my bean that I was partly the cause of her peculiar nervousness until Poppy spoke up.

“Jerry knows our secret, Mrs. Warmley. As my buddy, I couldn’t very well keep it from him. Besides, I need his help. You can trust him. For he’s that kind of a kid.”

I could see, though, even after this speech, that she didn’t like to discuss her affairs in front of me. It was her pride, I suppose. For years and years she had successfully hidden her money poverty, as you might call it, from her neighbors. And however trustworthy we were in her eyes, it distressed her to have us know the truth.

So I sensibly meandered outside, on some slight pretext, where I fooled around, chinning with the carpenters, until my chum joined me.

“It’s the neighbors, Jerry,” says he, referring to the rejected money-making scheme. “She doesn’t want them to know about her circumstances. And boarders, of course, would sort of give her away.”

“Well, what now?” says I, when we set off down the bushy path. “Do we start sorting the mamma goldfish and the papa goldfish into pairs?”

“No hurry about that. First, I want to call on Mr. Lung.”

“You and me, both,” says I, remembering about the missing B.V.D’s.

“You’re a particular friend of his, aren’t you, Jerry?”

“Well,” was my modest admission, “I haven’t any reason to believe that he dislikes me. For last Christmas he gave Dad a fountain pen to slip into my stocking. ‘Melican ink stick’ is what he called it. I think he’s all right—for a Chinaman.”

Poppy was now wrapped in his thoughts. And watching him, out of the corner of my eye, I found myself wondering, curiously, what connection there was in his mind between Mr. Lung’s corner laundry and our dollar goldfish.

Turning into School Street, we collided with Red Meyers, who was dragging a young stepladder with one hand and swinging a metal bucket with the other.

If you have read any of the books of the “Jerry Todd” series, starting with JERRY TODD AND THE WHISPERING MUMMY, a mystery story, you’ll need no introduction to old red-head. His freckles are so thick it’s hard to tell where one ends and another begins. Two-legged monkey that he is, and as hot-headed as he is red-headed, you can’t be around him a minute without laughing at him.

“Moving?” says I, giving him a lift with the stepladder.

“Oh,” he grunted, “it’s those blamed old store windows again.”

“Aunt Pansy’s?” I grinned.

“Sure thing. They always need washing just when I want to do something else.”

As I have mentioned, his Aunt Pansy, a widow lady, whose husband fell in the river and never came up for air, runs the old beauty parlor beside the Chinese laundry. Other times I had seen him washing her front windows. She pays him, of course. But he always has to do a certain amount of grumbling. That’s his way.

At the Hill-Street crossing we pretty nearly upset Doc Leland’s old flivver with the stepladder. Gee, you should have seen Doc’s eyes pop out when the car went over the ladder bumpety-bump! Leaving Red on the corner, draped wearily against a telephone pole, Poppy and I turned in at the door of the laundry, where we found the proprietor prancing around, fanning the air with his arms, his long pigtail dancing, the maddest Chinaman you ever set eyes on in all your life.

A bewildered salesman was trying to keep out of the other’s way.

“But, Mr. Lung, I’m sure my firm wouldn’t have shipped you more laundry soap than you ordered.”

“Too much-e soap,” screeched the dancing proprietor. “Whole house flull. C’losets flull. Kitchen flull. No room in cellar for coal-e in coal-e place. All flull soap. Make-e me much-e swear. Too blamed plenty soap.”

The salesman searched through the stubs of his order book.

“Here it is, Mr. Lung. One thousand cakes of E-Z-R-Rub semi-soft laundry soap.”

“No, no!” the proprietor fanned the air some more. “Too much-e soap.”

“But these are your figures, Mr. Lung. How can you get around that?”

I was grinning good and plenty now. Several times I had tried to show the Chinaman the difference between 1,000 and 100. Invariably when he wrote “100” he got it “1,000.” It was very probable, I thought, that he had added one cipher too many to his soap order.

Everybody in Tutter likes Mr. Lung. For quite a while Mother wouldn’t send him any work, having the notion that Chinamen weren’t clean. But I had her go down town one afternoon to see his macaw, which took her into his living rooms, and so she saw for herself that he was as neat as wax. Now he gets work from our house every week. He calls me “Jelly,” as I have mentioned, which is as close as he can get to “Jerry.” And I wish you could hear the mixed-up mess he makes of some of the popular songs, for he can’t work without singing, any more than he can talk to a customer without smiling. Good news or bad, he always smiles, showing two rows of the whitest teeth I ever saw.

But, as I say, he wasn’t singing or smiling now. I guess not. His Chinese “dander” was aroused for fair. And to end the dispute to his liking, he grabbed a hot iron, running the salesman out of the building.

“Cheat! Burgle man!” he screeched. “Burn-e lying nose off flace. Me make-e up for too much-e soap. Robber!”

Then, when I had told him that he probably had made another mistake with his ciphers, he was sort of disconsolate.

“Ol’ fool-e Chinaman,” he called himself names. “Much-e dumb in head. Never git Melican one-two-three like li’l’ boy klindergarten. Too much-e deep for poor dumb Chinaman.”

“If you hadn’t made the salesman sore,” says I, “you could have sent the extra soap back.”

“Too much-e soap,” he waggled, as depressed over the mistake as though he had just buried his best friend. “Melican one-two-three no like-e Chinaman’s one-two-three.”

Poppy and I looked around. The laundryman sure had a houseful of soap, all right! It was piled everywhere.

“Too much-e soap,” he kept saying, over and over again, as he followed us around. “Every place, too much-e soap.”

“Jerry,” the leader quickly got my ear, “we can sell this soap for him, if he’d rather have the money.”

I couldn’t see any sense to that.

“I thought we were going to sell goldfish?” says I.

“We’ll sell the soap first. It won’t be any trick. For everybody uses soap. And this ought to be fine dish-washing soap.”

We could sell it, all right. I hadn’t any doubts about that. But I still couldn’t see why. It was all unnecessary work, to my notion.

“It won’t hurt him,” says I, “to have a year’s supply of soap on hand.”

“But if we help him, maybe he’ll help us.”

“What do you mean?”

“We need a down-town location, Jerry.”

My wits were beginning to percolate now. And I saw why Poppy had headed for here in the first place.

“A sort of goldfish store, huh?”

“Sure thing,” says he. “Look at his windows. Nothing in them but dead flies. They might better be filled with our goldfish. You talk with him, Jerry. For he knows you better than he does me. Tell him that we’ll peddle the soap without charge, if he’ll let us use the front part of his store. We won’t bother him in the least, or interfere in any way with his business. Be sure and tell him that.”

In the next few moments it was brought home to me how much it profits a boy to make friends. I know kids in our town who hoot at Mr. Lung whenever they see him in the street, calling him “Old Pigtail” and “Old Chop-suey.” But I never do that. Therefore he has a lot of confidence in me. So, when I made him understand how much it would help our goldfish scheme if we could turn the unused part of the laundry into a goldfish store, he showed the first smile since his ruck-a-tuck with the soap salesman.

“Jelly good boy,” he patted me on the back. “Jelly good boy all-e time. Old Sam make-e hot iron on c’llars and Jelly and Ploppy make-e gloldflish. Maybe like happy partners.”

During the time that we were loading up with soap we heard Red Meyers’ lusty bazzoo out in front. We didn’t know, though, what was going on in the street until we came from the laundry. Then, as can be imagined, we parked ourselves on the corner to see the fun.