"It's just like a little city here, isn't it, Toyman?" Marmaduke said, "all the katydids, and bugs, and snakes, and things, workin' an' workin' away."
"Yes," said the Toyman, as they watched Robber Hawk swing round and round in the sky, "how any one can feel lonely in the country I can't see. I can understand it in the city, where you can't speak to a soul without his putting his hand on his watch, but here there's always a lot of folks with beaks and claws and tails, and all kinds o' tongues an' dialecks, that you don't need any introduction to, to say 'howdy!'"
But Marmaduke remembered that morning and how the Toyman had seemed in trouble. He had certainly looked lonely when Marmaduke and Wienerwurst had found him sitting up there on the hill, and the little boy couldn't help asking,--"Don't you ever feel lonely? You haven't any wife, and Mother says she pities a man without chicken or child--'tleast she said something like that--and how it wasn't good for a man to live alone--an' you do--out in your bunkhouse."
For the first time that afternoon the Toyman, who had been so worried, laughed his old hearty laugh, and Echo sent it back from her cave in the hill.
"No!" said he, "I don't want any ole wife. Like as not she'd talk me to death. Besides I don't feel lonely when you're along, little fellow."
The little boy felt very happy over that, but, for some reason or other, he felt quite embarrassed, too. Often, when he felt happiest, he couldn't put his happiness into words--he just couldn't talk about the particular thing that was making him happy. And, strange to say, he would usually talk about something quite different. So he said,--
"Let's see your knife."
The Toyman took it out. It was a beauty, too, with five blades, all of different sizes, and a corkscrew.
Marmaduke tried to open one of the blades, but he couldn't, they were too strong for his fingers.
So the Toyman took it.