"There you go again! There you go!" exclaimed the Itinerant Tinker. He actually shed a tear. "I knew you'd do it—I knew it!"
"Now what have I done?" asked Dickey, innocently.
"You've broken the silence," said the Itinerant Tinker, sadly. "It'll take me hours and hours to glue that together. But first," he went on, after another long pause, "I'll show you how neatly this split infinitive can be mended."
Thereupon he withdrew the wedge, dipped a brush into a pot of glue, and, after distributing the sticky fluid over the split sides, brought them carefully and neatly together.
"There!" he exclaimed, triumphantly, "that's the proper way to bring together a split infinitive. Beware, my boy, of splitting your infinitives; but if you do, call on the Itinerant Tinker and he'll straighten 'em out for you."
"Before we move along," he resumed, after he had loaded himself with his merchandise, "perhaps you'd like to listen to a story?"
"I should, if it wasn't about split infinitives," replied Dickey, doubtfully. "They really make me quite dizzy."
"Well, it's not," said the Itinerant Tinker, smiling vaguely. "It's the story of the
PEDANTIC PEDAGOGUE
"I saw him sitting—sitting there,
Outside the school-house door,
It was a dismal afternoon;
The hour was half-past four.