United States or Morocco ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
And the Toyman just laughed his hearty laugh and slapped his knees with his rough brown hand. His answer was strange yet very true. "Tomorrow," he replied. It was true, you see, for, as they say in school, "Tomorrow never comes," and that is just when the Toyman will stop being a boy. Meanwhile he was making a ring in the ground, two feet across.
Still he didn't play very much that day. Mother sent the Toyman over to the Cricket farm to ask Johnny's mother to let her boy stay for the night. He did for three whole days and great fun they had with Little Geeup, and the red dogcart, and the little lame boy, giving Wienerwurst rides to make him all well.
Had Giant Northwind gotten in the house at last! Marmaduke shivered and crept out of bed and hurried into the next room. He kept as far away from that giant shadow as he could. But he never cried out. He was very brave. On and on against the wall he tiptoed towards the chair by the fire, where the Toyman sat, thinking his strange thoughts. The Toyman felt a tug at his sleeve. He looked around.
Somehow their particular creak was different from that of any other wheels and the children could tell it long before ever the wagon came in sight. When they were younger, the children used to ask a question just as the reins fell over the dashboard and the Toyman jumped to the ground. "What have you got for me, Toyman?" it always was.
There was a nice ending to it too, although the dandy Rocket ball was lost in the old crow's nest. For, when he told them about it all at the supper-table that night, Father turned to the Toyman, and, reaching into his pockets, where some money jingled, said: "So the home-team won, did they? though they lost the ball?
And the sky is just as gray as the Quaker ladies over in the meeting-house on Wally's creek," he added. That afternoon they heard sleigh-bells, clear, tinkling, but never jangling, on the still air. "Whoa!" yelled the Toyman. The big sleigh stopped by the side porch.
"Oh!" said Marmaduke, "I thought of it just like this"; and he snapped his fingers to show just how quick. "But pshaw! I could think of lots more galoochious than that." Then he added in delight, "The one who loses has to pull the peg out of the ground with his teeth." Meanwhile the Toyman was driving that peg into the ground.
"If you dug a little more," he asked, "would you really go down through the earth, all the way to China where the Chinamen live?" "Sure," replied the Toyman, who never liked to disappoint little boys. "Then," said Marmaduke, "please dig a little more for I'd like to see where the Chinamen live ." His voice sounded very sleepy.
Now Reddy Toms was a boy in his own class, and you could always tell him a long way off because his head was covered with red hair as thick as a thatched roof, and his face was spotted all over, like a snake's, with freckles. However, the Toyman said it was all a mistake. "No, not that tad," he explained, "it's Reddy Fox they're after." "What!" exclaimed Marmaduke.
Then he took another bottle and said some more: "One bottle of this medicine is worth five dollahs. Who would not give a paltry five dollahs for to be cured of his miseries? But ladees and gents, because I was once born in your beautiful ceety I will sell " "Why, he even forgot its name," whispered Jehosophat. "Shush," whispered the Toyman right back at him, "don't give him away."
Word Of The Day