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“Sure, sonny,” he repeated, “it’ll all come out in the wash.” And he patted the hand beside him.

You see, Marmaduke never asked the Toyman what his trouble really was, or anything at all. And that is always the very best way–when a friend’s in trouble, don’t bother him with a lot of questions–and pester the life out of him–but just take his mind off his troubles by suggesting some nice game to play–like marbles or “Duck-on-the-Rock,” or going fishing, or something; and if you can’t do that, just sit beside him, “quiet-like,” and be his friend.

For a while they sat so, drinking in the cool air, and looking down at the valley, and the white houses, and red barns, and the yellow haystacks, and the horses and people like ants crawling here and there. There were two ribbons in the valley now, one brown and one silver, the Road and the River. And from the Church with the Long White Finger Pointing at the Sky, came the sound of bells–pealing –pealing–up the hill to the Sky.

All else was still. But after they had listened for a while they discovered that it wasn’t so still as it had seemed. Every bird and insect, each leaf and blossom, was busy, preparing its dinner, or else just growing. A twig rustled as a little garter snake squirmed into the thicket. A little gray nuthatch looked for its lunch on a locust tree, crawling over the trunk head-downwards, while, on a branch overhead, a crested flycatcher perched watching, watching, then all-of-a-sudden swooped down and pounced on a fly, swallowed him, flew back to its perch, and watched again.

In the tall grasses which rose like a miniature forest around his head, green katydids jumped, as spry as monkeys. And, as he lay on his back, he could see, way up in the middle of the sky, and right on a line with his eye, Ole Robber Hawk himself, or else one of his relatives or friends. He was brown, of course, but against the blue of the sky he looked like a little black speck with a couple of thin wavy lines for wings.

There was music, too, for a woodthrush sang, oh ever so sweet, and the oriole whistled as clear as a flute, while a locust rattled away like the man who plays the drum and all the noisy things in the theatre-orchestra. But, busiest of all, at his feet an army of black ants hurried around a little hole in the ground, seeming quite as big as the people and horses in the valley below.

“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.”