There came a day when it rained, and the Toyman couldn't work in the fields, or paint the house, or mend the leaks in the roof of the barn. Of course, he might have fixed Old Methusaleh's harness, which badly needed repairs, but he looked at the sky and said,--
"It looks like snow. I ought to get at that--"
Then he bit his lip and the secret was still safe.
Very mysteriously he unlocked the door of his workshop. And the boys peeked in.
"Where's your ticket, Sonny?" he asked, seeing their two heads in the doorway. That was his way, you see, making a game out of everything.
"We haven't any, but oh, Toyman, let us in, plee-a-sse."
"All right, but don't talk more than forty words to the minute, or I can't plane this straight," he said, working away at the boards.
They couldn't yet guess what IT was. And it took a good many hours from his work and chores for the Toyman to finish IT, whatever IT was. But after about a week they saw standing against the wall four boards about two feet long, curved like this:
And four more cross-pieces of a very ordinary shape: