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The Toyman was looking at him with a smile on his face.

“He’s just like me,” he said at last, and the children, surprised at that, asked all together:

“Who’s like you?”

“That little duck there.”

“Like you!” Jehosophat shouted. “Why he doesn’t look like you at all!”

The Toyman puffed away on his corncob pipe before he answered:

“Oh inside he’s the same. I was just like him when I was a kid. I had a step-mother, too, and she and all the step-uncles and aunts scolded and scolded, and whipped me besides, because I wanted to go to sea on a great big ship.”

“What did you do?”

They didn’t really need to ask that question, for hadn’t the Toyman been most everywhere, and hadn’t he told them many a story about the great sea and the ships?

“Yes, they all said I would drown or become a wicked bad man.”

Marmaduke thought he would like to do something to those step-uncles and aunts who treated the Toyman so badly.

“They don’t know what they’re talking about,” he shouted. “You’re good as anybody in the world.”

“Thank you, little feller,” replied the Toyman, patting his head. “But they said I would, just the same. They talked just like those old Wyandottes there.

“But I fooled them all,” he went on. “And one night, when it was dark, just a few stars out, I climbed out of bed and jumped out of the window and ran away.

“I walked and I walked, miles and miles, till I came to a big town by the sea. There were lots of big ships at the docks, and I asked a man, with a great big beard, to take me too. So he took me on board, and I was a little cabin boy. But bye and bye I got to be a real sailor, and I sailed all over the world in the ship, and saw lots of people, yellow, and black, and brown, and funny places and queer houses and–“

“Be careful, Frank!”

They all turned at once. There was Mother, standing right near them. All the time she had been listening, near the Crying Tree.

“Now, Frank,” she repeated, “be careful or you’ll put notions in those children’s heads, and some day they’ll be running away from me.”

Still she didn’t look cross, and she smiled at the Toyman, especially when he answered:

“Not from a mother like you, Mis’ Green. How about it, kiddies?”

And Marmaduke and Jehosophat were very sure they never could run away–not even to sea in a beautiful ship. So they kissed her and hugged her too.

Now the froggies were singing their evening song. The sun was getting close to his home in the west. Little Duckie and his real mother and father came out of the water and waddled off towards the barn. The Swans folded their wings and came to the shore. So the Toyman brought the ship to the harbour and anchored her for the night.