worth-while:

"I'll tell you what, let's play 'Duck-on-the-Rock.'"

Now as every boy in the world--at least in America--knows, that is a
wonderful game, but Marmaduke only said very crossly,--

"I don't want to play any of your ol' games." Now when Marmaduke acted
that way there must have been something the matter. Perhaps he had
gobbled down his oatmeal too fast--in great big gulps--when he should
have let the Thirty White Horses "champ, champ, champ," all those
oats. They were cooked oats, but then the Thirty White Horses, unlike
Teddy and Hal and ole Methusaleh, prefer cooked oats to raw.

Perhaps he had eaten a green apple. Sometimes he did that, and the
tart juice puckered his mouth all up, and--what was worse--puckered
his stomach all up, too.

Any way, he felt tired and out-of-sorts; tired of his toys, tired of
all the games, even such nice ones as "Duck-on-the-rock" and "Red
Rover."

There was nothing to do but sit on the fence.

Still, the world looked pretty nice from up there. It always looked
more interesting from a high place, and sometimes it gave you an
excited feeling. Of course, the big elm was a better perch, or the
roof of the barn, and Marmaduke often wondered what it would be like
to see the world from a big balloon, but the fence was good enough. It
curved up over a little hill, and he could see lots of the world from