FullReads

And the boys ran away, still mocking them. You could hear their shouts dying away in the distance:–

“Chinky, chinky Chinaman,
Bow, wow, wow!”

Not long after this the Toyman came out from Trennery’s and climbed on the seat; and he and Marmaduke and Old Methusaleh jogged along towards home. All the way, Marmaduke couldn’t help thinking of the three little men in their blue pajamas and their black pigtails; and he asked the Toyman a lot of questions, even more than you will find in his arithmetic, I guess, all about what those letters on the packages of shirts meant, and if the Chinamen braided their pigtails every night and morning just like girls, and if they really did eat “ole rats,” and bird’s-nest puddings, and all that.

The Toyman could hardly keep up with the questions; and he hadn’t answered them all, either, by the time they reached the White House with the Green Blinds by the Side of the Road.

On the afternoon of that same day, Marmaduke was sitting like a hoptoad, watching the Toyman dig post-holes in the brook pasture. The sun shone so soft and warm, and the cedar posts smelled so nice and fragrant, that he began to feel drowsy. He didn’t sit like a hoptoad any more, but lay on his elbow, and his head nodded–nodded—-nodded.

Rather faintly he heard the Toyman say:

“Well, that’s pretty deep. A little more, and I’d reach down into China.”

The little boy rubbed his eyes and looked down into the deep brown hole.

“If you dug a little more,” he asked, “would you really go down through the earth, all the way to China–where the Chinamen live?”

“Sure,” replied the Toyman, who never liked to disappoint little boys.

“Then,” said Marmaduke, “please dig a little more–for–I’d like–to see–where–the Chinamen–live–.” His voice sounded very sleepy.

The Toyman dug another shovelful or two, and all the while the little boy’s head kept nodding, nodding in the sun–then–as the last shovelful fell on the pile at his side, he looked down in the hole once more and heard voices–strange voices.

Words were coming up out of that hole, and it seemed to Marmaduke that he could see those words as well as hear them. Now that is a very odd thing, but it is actually what happened–he could both see and hear them–and they looked like the funny music on phonograph advertisements–something like this:

And, way down at the bottom of the hole, he saw three black heads with pigtails that curled upward in the hole like smoke coming from a chimney.

He tried to grab hold of them, but he fell, and Wienerwurst after him, right plump among the pigtails, landing on the three Chinamen way down in the hole, and knocking them flat on their backs until their feet with the funny black slippers kicked in the air.

Then they all got up and rubbed their tummies under the blue pajamas.

“Velly wude little Mellican boy,” said the first little Chinaman, whose name was Ping Pong.

“Velly bad manners,” said the second, who was called Sing Song.

“You beggy our pardon,” the third, whose name was Ah See.

Now Marmaduke intended to do that very thing–that is, beg their pardon, for he was very polite for an American boy.

“I’m very sorry–I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he explained, “I just fell down that hole.”

At this he looked up the sides of the hole. It seemed as if he were at the bottom of a great round stove-pipe, or a well with brown sides. Far, far above him was a little circle of light blue, the top of the hole where he had fallen in.

After he had begged their pardon so nicely, the three little yellow men said, all together,–

“Little Mellican boy velly politely; he has honorable ancestors.”

Marmaduke looked around again and saw that they were standing, not on the bottom of the hole, but on a little landing like that on a stairway. Below them the hole kept on descending into the darkness, curving round and round like a corkscrew or the stairways in old castles–down, down, down.