“Duck your heads, everybody!” cried Mr. Poodle; “here comes a cloud that will knock your hats off!” And sure enough, there was a great fleecy white cloud, like a big ball of thistle down, rolling and tumbling across the sky, and so close to their heads that Tommy and Helen could almost touch it by stretching out their hands.
“This must be a very high hill,” said Tommy.
“Yes, indeed,” answered Mr. Poodle. “Why it is nearly as high as the sky.” Then he asked Tommy to line up the soldiers, and said he would fire a salute so the Toyville people would know of their arrival.
After the salute had been fired, the company resumed their journey, and as there was no longer any danger of losing the way, Mr. Poodle bade the soldiers take the lead. Tommy and Helen were sure that they had again heard someone laughing in the bushes, but as Mr. Poodle paid no attention, the matter was soon forgotten. A funny curly road ran down over the hillside, twisting and turning and bobbing here and there, just as if it wanted to get into as many nooks and corners as possible, which was not a bit of wonder either, for nowhere in all the world could be found a hillside as beautiful.
“We must now travel down this long curly road,” said Mr. Poodle. Then he asked Helen and Tommy if they were glad they had come on the journey and if they were getting at all tired.
“Yes, indeed, we are glad, Mr. Poodle,” said Helen and Tommy, both speaking at once. “And we are not the least tiny bit tired, either.” {43}
“That is good,” said the little toymaker. “It is a long walk down the hill to the city of Toyville, but I think you will not mind that, for there are so many new sights to be seen.”
At first the road wound through a grove of beautiful trees thickly covered with sweet blossoms of every color of which a body might think. Then it entered a wonderful orchard, where were rows and rows of trees all loaded with ripe fruit. Fruit? Well, that is what it was called in Toyville, but over across the hills, back where Helen and Tommy lived, it would be called candy. There were bonbons, all of cream and chocolate; there were lovely fat white marshmallows, luscious and ripe, which hung in big juicy clusters, waiting to be picked; there were sugar plums, the finest and biggest that grow on trees anywhere in the land. Not a single tree in the whole orchard but what had this fine fruit all bursting ripe, and so much on every branch and twig that they were almost breaking off and tumbling to the ground.
Two funny little men were seen gathering the fruit in a great wooden tray with long handles. “Pick all you want,” they said to Tommy and Helen. “Eat all you want, too. It will not make you a bit ill, as city candy would, and for every one we pick, two grow in its place.”
The men did not have to say those words twice. Indeed, they hardly had time to say them even once, before Helen and Tommy were under the trees and stuffing their pockets bursting full; what they couldn’t put in theirs they stuffed in Rolie Polie’s, which were very big and held almost as much as a quart. The grass that grew between the trees of the orchard was nearly as soft as velvet, and {44} when any of the ripe fruit fell to the ground, it didn’t get at all broken. There were some shade trees growing in the orchard, too. Mr. Poodle said they were planted there to keep the warm sun from shining on the fruit daytimes, because the sun might make the fruit melt.