Читать книгу Poppy Ott and the Freckled Goldfish - Edward Edson Lee - Страница 7

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A fellow needs to use a lot of tact in selling soap. I soon found that out. Starting off with a lot of pep, I pulled my first boner, so to speak, at the home of Mrs. Robinson in Chestnut Street. After one look into her cluttered kitchen I figured that here was the best soap prospect in town. But when I offered to demonstrate on her dirty floor, she got as mad as hops. Golly Ned! I sure made fast tracks out of there.

Then I further got in bad at Mrs. Peghorn’s home in the next block. A big fat woman, with an arm on her like a prize fighter, my regular line of gab didn’t interest her a-tall. Noticing a mangy-looking poodle parked beside the kitchen stove, I wound up by saying, resourcefully, that my laundry soap was also good for fleas, cooties, lice, bedbugs, and so on. Wough! When I saw her start for the broom, I wisely beat it. For I could tell by the look on her face that she meant business.

As a whole, though, I had a very successful day. At five-thirty I turned in my share of the jack, the total of which came to almost a hundred dollars. In his great joy over our success, Mr. Lung brought out a big dish of Chinese candy, which looked like burnt pretzels smothered in goose grease and tasted like asbestos pancakes. But you should have seen him gobble the junk down!

“Jelly and Ploppy all-e same-e smart boys like whip,” he bragged on us. “Make-e ol’ Sam glad like Melly Clistman day. Now ol’ Sam help-e Jelly and Ploppy sell ’um gloldflish.”

To make sure that our goldfish were all right, and hadn’t further walked off on young Rainbow’s stringer, we dropped in at Mrs. Warmley’s place that evening, where the unexpected news was dished out to us that Professor Pip had rented her old conservatory.

“He calls it his laboratory,” the old lady spoke of the deal with a smile. “This afternoon he and the Meyers boy worked for hours brushing down cobwebs and repairing broken windows. See!” she proudly held up a ten-dollar bill. “Here is my first month’s rent.”

“Good for you,” laughed Poppy.

“At first, his interest in the old greenhouse rather surprised me. It didn’t seem to me that he could be in earnest. But it was explained to me that he needed exactly such a secluded place to carry on his experimental work. So we came to terms. And I have agreed to board him, too.”

Poppy didn’t say anything to that. But his eyes held a curious look as he met the speaker’s eyes, which showed, plainly enough, what his thoughts were like.

“This morning after you left,” the old lady went on in explanation, “I had quite a battle with my stubborn pride. And I’ve come to the sensible conclusion that I must do more to help myself, rather than depend on you boys for everything. In fact, I felt ashamed of myself, on reflection, to think that I had given your practical suggestion so little consideration. And now that I have taken in one stranger, I’m wondering if I can’t advertise in the Chicago newspapers and thus get in touch with a few more select prospects, some one, possibly, who, worn out, needs the rest of a quiet place such as this; or even a convalescent.”

Poppy’s eyes were lit up like peeled onions.

“I think that’s a dandy scheme,” he gave his opinion. “Boarders of that kind won’t attract much neighborhood attention. In fact, it will be taken for granted that the newcomers are guests of yours.”

“Yes,” nodded the old lady, her cheeks flushing, “I thought of that.”

We worked out the advertisement for her, promising to mail it on our way home, after which, for the first time, we were shown through the big house. Talk about a maze of rooms! The wonder to me was that we didn’t get lost. Many of the big rooms, of course, were kind of shabby, as the paper had been on the walls for years. The woodwork, we were told by the proud owner, was solid walnut. Following her up the wide, winding stairs, I had the peculiar feeling that I was in an enchanted castle. And could any one have better fitted the part of a story-book character than this pleasing little old lady in her old-fashioned sweeping silk dress! We were shown furniture a hundred years old—dinky little French chairs with bowlegs and pin-cushion backs; English dressers with towering mirrors and marble tops; huge bedsteads, the ornamental headboards of which seemed to scowl at us in the dim light. There were many curious corner cabinets, too, and a library, the books of which, for the most part, were much too thick and somber-looking to interest me.

I could see, all right, why the little old lady didn’t want to take everybody into her home. But, as she had said, a few very select out-of-town boarders would fit in nicely. Certainly, I thought with a smile, this was exactly the proper place for the queer-acting freckle specialist. We could hear him teetering around in his room on the second floor. And on the way downstairs the house owner asked us, curiously, if it were true, as she had been told, that he was working on a cure for freckles.

“What a peculiar occupation,” she laughed softly, when we had told her all we knew about the stranger. “But then,” her thoughts carried her along, “the man, himself, is very peculiar. I hardly know how to take him.”

Red Meyers gave us the high sign when we crossed Hill Street.

“Have some,” he gurgled, shoving a sack of jaw breakers at us, out of which he had generously stuffed his own face.

“Evidently,” laughed Poppy, loading up, “you weren’t kept waiting for your first day’s pay.”

“It’s wonderful to be rich,” Red jingled his money. “I’m thinking of giving away Fords.”

“How do you like your new job?” I asked him.

“Lovely,” came the juicy gurgle. “We’re going mud hunting to-morrow.”

It was then explained to us by the assistant freckle specialist that his employer was in need of a certain kind of yellow mud.

Poppy laughed.

“Tell him to try the Weir marsh in the river bottoms, where we dug up the pirate’s gold cucumbers. For there’s plenty of mud down there.”

That gave Red a thought.

“Say, Poppy,” says he quickly, “do you know of an oak tree in the Weir marsh with a cow’s head?”

“Sure thing,” grinned the fun-loving leader. “I’ve even heard it bellow. And one of its horns is pink with green spots.”

“Cuckoo!”

“It has an elephant’s trunk, too,” came the further nonsense, “and its bark sounds like a fox terrier.”

“Haw! haw! haw!” Red unhinged his bazzoo. “That’s a good one.”

Poppy was curious.

“What made you ask about the oak tree?” he inquired.

“Because that’s where the yellow mud is.”

“In the tree?” I piped up innocently.

“Haw! haw! haw!” bellowed Red. “That’s another good one.”

“One more cackle like that,” threatened Poppy, “and the show troupe will take up a collection.”

“Time out,” gagged Red. “I swallowed a jaw breaker.”

“Just so it wasn’t a paving brick,” says I cheerfully, “or a wash tub.”

Getting his wind, the assistant freckle specialist then explained what he meant by a “tree with a cow’s head.” The foliage of the oak tree had peculiarly grown in that odd shape. And it was near this tree that the mud hunters were going to begin their work.

“Of course,” Red wound up, “if plain mud was all we wanted we could find it any place. But, as I say, we need a special kind of mud.”

“Evidently,” says Poppy thoughtfully, “the Professor must have been in these parts before, or else he wouldn’t be so well acquainted with the shape of our river-bottom trees.”

“No,” Red shook his head. “A man in a Chicago hospital told him about the funny-shaped oak tree. The Professor was at the hospital when the man died.”

“This is getting mysterious,” Poppy laughed.

“The man said he found the yellow mud near an oak tree with a cow’s head. He put a gob of the mud on his freckled check, where a bee had punched a stinger into him. And when he squinted at himself in the mirror that night there wasn’t a sign of a freckle on that side of his face.”

“After which, I suppose,” Poppy couldn’t quite swallow the story, “he went back to the oak tree and put some of the magical mud on the other side of his freckled face.”

“He didn’t get the chance to go back. For that night he was taken down with appendicitis. They rushed him to Chicago. And two days later he was dead.”

The leader studied the freckled face for a moment or two.

“Red,” he finally inquired, “is this true?”

“I have the Professor’s word for it.”

“An oak tree with a cow’s head!” laughed Poppy. “I bet you never find it.”