"Whatever did you do then?" asked Dickey.
"I protested, of course. He merely said that he was only making game of me. But if there's any one thing that I can do better than another," went on the Itinerant Tinker, after another embarrassing pause, "it's piecing together a split infinitive. Would you like me to show you how it's done?"
"Indeed, I should," Dickey eagerly answered; "very much, indeed."
"Very well, then. Just give me time to set down these necessary commodities, and I'll show you exactly the manner in which it's done and undone."
After he had rid himself of his awkward burden, the Itinerant Tinker carefully selected a saw from his kit of tools.
"Is that a log over there?" he asked, pointing toward a mound of earth. "I'm a trifle nearsighted, you know."
"No," Dickey replied. "But there's one off there, just to the other side. A big one, too."
"The identical thing," said the Itinerant Tinker. Whereupon he walked over to it and immediately began sawing a thin slab from off its smooth end.
"Now," said he, after he had finished the rather difficult task, oiled his saw and returned it to his kit, "I proceed to write the word love in the infinitive mood."
"Is that a sad mood?" asked Dickey. "It sounds very much like it, I think."