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Sometimes Jehosophat's father opens the gate in the fence and lets the geese wander down to the pond. A silly way they have of stretching out their long white necks and crying, "Hiss, hiss!" This frightens Hepzebiah who always runs away. Then the geese waddle along in single file, that is one by one, like fat old ladies crossing a muddy street on their way to sewing society.
But the afternoon was not gone when he felt a big tug at his line. It took him a long time to pull that fish in. When the hook came out of the water a long wriggly thing was on it. "Oo, oo, it's a snake," screamed little Hepzebiah. "No, it's only an eel," said the Toyman, "he won't hurt you." But he had to take it off Jehosophat's hook himself, the eel was so slippery and wriggled so.
But that was the least of Jehosophat's worries. He had been given a piece to learn to recite before a big crowd! It was poetry all about a boy who had stuck by his ship and gone down with it, too. The piece was called by the boy's name a queer sort of word Casabianca. If the piece was as hard as its name, Jehosophat thought he never would learn it.
And when the long legs had caught up with the short ones, the Toyman put his arm around the boy's shoulders, and they walked along like well, like two old chums. What was finest, too, was that he never mentioned the cause of Jehosophat's trouble and embarrassment, which is what no really true friend ever should do. At last Jehosophat asked, "Where we goin'?"
But once he sang out louder than ever, for he had found a bit of string from Jehosophat's broken kite. "The very thing, the very thing," he said to her. And once Mother Oriole found, caught in the shutter, little threads of Hepzebiah's hair. Then the three happy children woke up. They rubbed their eyes. They had been dreaming in the warm sun. But their dream was true and the fairy story was true.
So the birthday party really lasted long after the seven candles had gone out, and the cake had gone, too, every crumb. Uncle Roger lived in town, quite a distance from the home of the Three Happy Children. When they walked, Marmaduke's short legs took one whole hour to reach it; Jehosophat's, forty-five minutes; though the Toyman's long shanks could cover the ground in fifteen.
The red and blue one was tied on Jehosophat's line, the red and yellow one on Marmaduke's, and the blue and yellow on little Hepzebiah's. "What are those pretty things?" asked Marmaduke. "Floaters," the Toyman answered. "Watch and you will see what we do with them."
That made six! Pop went a button and splash it landed in a puddle of brown water. For three days it had rained, washing the white snow away. The ruts in the road were full of these puddles, nice and brown and inviting. Sammy's eyes and Jehosophat's eyes followed the button as it landed in the water, making little rings which grew larger all the time. "Let's slosh," said Sammy.
Mother would always send Jehosophat and Hepzebiah into the spare room to sleep, and she would come herself and lie down in Jehosophat's bed, right next to the little sick boy, right where he could reach out his hand and place it in hers. That was "most worth" all the aches and the pains. It was all right to have Father near, but somehow Marmaduke felt better if it was Mother that lay by his side.
And that was the finest present any boy could have ever. The name was a very important matter. The boys each had a dozen they could think of, but Mother and Father and the Toyman couldn't think of any. At least they wouldn't give any suggestions. They thought it was Jehosophat's right to name his own pony. It was settled at last, "Little Geeup." Where-ever Jehosophat got that name nobody knew.
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