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Updated: May 9, 2025
Marmaduke was sitting on the fence. He wasn't thinking of anything in particular, just looking around. Jehosophat called to him from the barnyard, "Come'n an' play 'I spy." But Marmaduke only grumbled, "Don't want to." "Well, let's play 'Cross Tag' then," Jehosophat suggested. "Don't want to," repeated his brother again, not very politely.
Sliver after sliver of the wood fell on the ground. Sometimes one would drop into the water and float away like a fairy canoe, with the green willow leaves that fell from the Crying Tree. So under the magic knife the little ship grew and grew, till the masts were fitted too, and set fast and tight in the clean smooth deck. "But where are the sails?" asked Jehosophat impatiently.
"I won 'em, they're mine," and still Fatty kept putting them in his bag. Marmaduke could hear them dropping in. "Chink, chink," they went, but their "chink, chink" didn't sound so pretty or so much like music as when they were dropping in his own bag. "That's not the way the Toyman plays," Jehosophat insisted, "when we're through we divide 'em up again so's to be even."
And the children got down on their knees around the tub and tried to take the apples in their teeth. But round and round they bobbed, so fast that it was difficult to catch them. "Ugh!" exclaimed Jehosophat; "Kerchoo!" sneezed Marmaduke; "Guhuh!" coughed Hepzebiah, all their eyes and their mouths, noses and tummies, too, full of water. And always those little red apples bobbed out of reach.
It was hard to dress properly that morning and particularly hard to wash behind one's ears. Jehosophat put on one stocking inside out; Marmaduke his union suit outside in; and one of his shoes was button and the other lace. But they were all covered up, anyway, and Ole Northwind couldn't nip their flesh, and the Constable couldn't arrest them, so it was sufficient, I suppose.
And all the White Wyandottes took up the cry: "Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut you'll get it." Jehosophat wished he were as small as Hop-o'-my-Thumb, so that he could creep through the keyhole and never be seen at all. But he had one friend left little Wienerwurst, who frisked up to him just then, wagging his tail. He didn't scold Jehosophat at all, partly because he was so often up to mischief himself.
And all the next day and the next night and the third day and the third night too. Then all of a sudden it stopped, and the three happy children woke in the morning, and looked out of the window. "Why the snow's most as high as Wienerwurst's house!" cried Jehosophat. Then they all trooped in to breakfast. "We will make forts," said Jehosophat. "Hooray!" exclaimed Marmaduke.
"Keep quiet," Jehosophat shouted. "You don't need to tell on me!" "Rubber, rubber, rubber," gobbled Mr. Stuckup just the same. Jehosophat kicked at him with his wet feet, and tried to grab the fat red nose that hung down over the turkey's beak. At that old Mr. Stuckup's feathers ruffled in anger, and he hurried off, still gobbling "rubber, rubber, rubber," as loud as he could.
In fact this matter of "Reals" and "Pures" was one that had to be settled at once. And Jehosophat settled it. "I guess," he said, after grave deliberation, "if you called them 'Pures' when you were a boy, we'll call 'em that too." Now this suggested a question to Marmaduke. "Say, Toyman, when did you stop being a boy?"
"What'll I do?" asked Jehosophat. "Just roll your marbles under this bridge, and if they go through the little holes, you can keep 'em. If they don't, they're mine." The two boys didn't see through the trick, and very foolishly they thought they might win some of their beautiful marbles back. So they rolled marble after marble against that little wooden bridge.
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