Kabumpo in Oz, Ruth Plumly Thompson [the snowy day read aloud TXT] 📗
- Author: Ruth Plumly Thompson
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“Come back!” cried Ozma. “Dear Sir Hokus, don’t you realize that if you kill Ruggedo he will fall down and break us to pieces? Besides, wicked as he is, I could not have him killed.”
“Yes, we should be all broken up if you did that,” sighed the Scarecrow. “We must try something else.”
Reluctantly, the Knight dropped back into the room. “Close the windows,” ordered Ozma with a little shudder.
“I’ve thought of a plan,” said Tik Tok, in his slow, painstaking way. “A ve-ry good plan.”
“Tell us what it is,” begged Dorothy. “And Oh, Tik Tok, hurry!”
“Eggs,” said the Copper Man solemnly.
“Oh” gasped Dorothy, “I remember. Eggs are the only things in Oz that Ruggedo is afraid of; for if an egg touches a gnome he shrivels up and disappears.”
“Then where are the eggs?” demanded Sir Hokus gloomily. “In faith, this sounds more like an omelet than a battle. But if we’re to fight with eggs instead of swords, let us draw them at once.
“You mean throw them,” corrected Dorothy. But Tik Tok shook his head violently.
“Not throw them,” said the Copper Man slowly, “threaten to throw them.”
“But how can we threaten a giant so far below us?” asked Ozma.
“Print a sign,” directed Tic Tok calmly, “and low-er it down to him.”
“Tik Tok,” cried the Scarecrow, rushing forward and embracing him impulsively, “your patent-action-double-guaranteed brains are marvels. I couldn’t have thought up a better plan myself.”
Now off ran Scraps to fetch a huge piece of cardboard, and the Scarecrow for a paint brush, and Sir Hokus for a piece of rope. “It’s growing lighter,“Quavered Trot, looking toward the windows. The sky was turning gray with little streaks of pink, and the three girls huddled together on the mattress gave a sigh of relief, for nothing, not even a giant, seems so bad by daylight.
“Perhaps someone has already started to help us, said Ozma hopefully. “But here’s the sign board. What shall we write?”
“How shall I begin?” asked the Scarecrow, dipping the brush into a can of green paint. “Dear Ruggedo?”
“I should say not,” said Dorothy indignantly, “Then I shall simply say, Sir,” said the Scarecrow.
“If you move or turn or shake your head a-gain, ten thousand eggs will be hurl-ed from the pal-ace windows,” suggested Tik Tok.
As this message met with general approval, the Scarecrow set it down with many flourishes and blotches of paint spilled between. Then Ozma painted her name and the Royal seal of Oz at the end.
Meanwhile, with the help of a pair of field glasses, Sir Hokus had located Ruggedo’s nose, sticking out like a huge cliff below the middle window of Dorothy’s room. So,. tying a long rope to each corner of the sign, and rolling it up so it would go through the window, the Knight let it down till it dangled directly in front of Ruggedo’s nose.
At first Ruggedo did not even see the sign, which was about as large as the tiniest visiting card compared to him. But it blew against his face and tickled his cheek. He tried to brush it away. Then, suddenly noticing it was dangling from above, he seized it in one hand and held it close to his left eye. The words were so small for a giant that Ruggedo had to squint fearfully before he could make them out at all, but when he did he gave a bloodcurdling scream, and began to tremble violently.
Up in the palace the entire company fell over and twenty windows were shaken to bits. Then everything grew quiet and there was perfect silence; for Ruggedo, realizing his danger, grew rigid with fright. Giant drops of perspiration trickled down his forehead. How long could be keep from moving?
“Well,” said Dorothy after a few minutes had passed, “I guess that will keep him quiet, but what next? Shall we let ourselves down with ropes?”
“We have none long enough,” said Sir Hokus.
“Then I’ll fall out and go for help,” said the Scarecrow brightly, and started toward the window. When he reached it he paused in astonishment. “Look,” he cried, waving excitedly to the others, “here comes someone, walking right over the clouds.”
Someone was coming toward the palace. A little gray-cloaked old gentleman-a surprisingly quick and nimble old gentleman-springing from cloud to cloud and pausing now and then to straighten a huge sack he carried over his left shoulder. He was so busy admiring the lovely sky colors behind him and waving merrily at the fluffy cloud figures above his head, that he did not see Ozma’s shining palace until he was almost upon it.
“Stars!” murmured the little old gentleman, balancing perilously on the very edge of a silver cloud. “Another air castle! How delightful! I shall jump right through it!”
Gathering himself together he leaped straight toward the window out of which Dorothy and Ozma and the others were looking. With a soft thud he struck the emerald setting just above the window, and down tumbled his sack. opening as it fell and filling the air with clouds of silver sand. Down tumbled the little old gentleman, turning over and over, and finally landing on a blankety white cloud far below.
All of this Dorothy saw, and was about to ask Ozma what it could mean when an overpowering drowsiness stole over her. Before she could speak her eyes closed, and she sank backward into a big arm chair. Trot and Betsy Bobbin with two little sighs crumpled down to the floor. The head of Sir Hokus dropped heavily on the sill, and not even in Pokes had he snored so lustily. Ozma slipped gently down beside Betsy and Trot, and in a moment there was not a person awake in that whole big palace. Even the little mice in the kitchen were fast asleep, with heads on their paws.
Did I say everyone? Well, not quite everyone had fallen under the strange spell. Tik Tok, Scraps, and the Scarecrow, who had never slept in their lives, were still wide awake, and regarding their companions with astonishment and alarm. The Tin Woodman was taking things calmly, oiling up his joints and polishing his tin jacket with silver polish.
“This is no time to sleep,” cried the Scarecrow, shaking Sir Hokus. “I say-wake up!” But all their efforts to arouse their companions were in vain.
“Enchant-ment,” said the Copper Man. “Some-” With a click and a whirr Tik Tok’s machinery ran down, and as Scraps and the Scarecrow were too upset to think of winding him, he stood as silent and dumb as the rest.
“What shall we do?” cried the Scarecrow, seizing Scraps’ arm. “Jump out of the window and go for help, or stay here and guard the palace?”
Scraps looked out of the window. “Stay here,” shuddered the Patch Work Girl, drawing in her head quickly.
“Then,” said the Scarecrow, “let us arm ourselves and prepare to withstand any attack.” He snatched up a pair of fire tongs and Scraps grasped the poker. Falling into step, the two marched from the top to the bottom of the palace.
Everywhere the same sight met their gaze; rooms turned topsy turvy, and spread over floors and sofas and chairs the sleeping figures of Ozma’s once lively Courtiers and servants. The effect was so distressing that Scraps and the Scarecrow found themselves whispering and treading about on tip-toe. After inspecting the whole palace they returned to Dorothy’s room and placed themselves disconsolately in the doorway.
“Anyway, Ruggedo is quiet,” sighed the Scarecrow, “and that is something.”
Scraps started to make a verse, but the silence and the ghostlike atmosphere of the sleeping palace had dashed even the spirits of the Patch Work Girl and she subsided with an indistinct mumble.
Ruggedo was silent for a very good reason. Ruggedo was asleep, to—asleep sitting up as stiff as a stone image, for even in his sleep he dreamed of the dreaded bombardment of eggs.
All this had happened because the little man in gray had taken Ozma’s palace for an air castle, and who could blame him for that? Even the Sand Man would not expect to find a regular palace set among the clouds. There are plenty of dream castles, to be sure, and one of the Sand Man’s chief delights is to jump through them and admire their lovely furniture. But sure-enough castles-the little fellow could not get over it. Sitting cross-legged on the white cloud, which floated close to Ruggedo’s head, he stared and stared.
“Well, I never,” chuckled the Sand Man, and turned a somersault for very amazement. Then, not knowing what else to do or think, he sensibly decided to hurry home and tell the whole affair to his wife. His empty bag he found on a tall treetop, and without one backward glance he bounded into the air and disappeared. Really, it was quite lucky the little old gentleman spilled his bag of sand where he did, for the only safe giant is a sleeping giant, and while Ozma and her friends lay dreaming they could not worry.
“Will they sleep forever?” sighed Scraps, after she and the Scarecrow had sat silently for an hour.
“Seems likely,” said the Scarecrow gloomily. “But even if they do,” he plucked three straws from his chest, “we shall stick to our post to the very end.”
The Scarecrow regarded the sleeping figures of the little girls affectionately.
“To the end of forever?” gulped Scraps, putting her cotton finger in her mouth. “How long is that?”
“That,” said the Scarecrow resignedly and settling himself comfortably, “that is what we shall soon see.
D’ you think you were alive before?” asked Kabumpo, squinting down his long trunk at Peg Amy. She had begged him to take off his plush robe and, spreading it on the grass, was beating it briskly with the branch of a tree.
“Yes,” sighed the Wooden Doll, pausing with uplifted stick and regarding Kabumpo solemnly, “I must have been alive before ‘cause I keep remembering things.
“What kind of things?” asked the Elegant Elephant, rubbing himself lazily against a tree.
“Well, this for instance,” said Peg, holding up a corner of the purple plush robe. “I once had a dress of it. I’m sure I had a dress of this stuff.”
“When you were a little doll?” asked Kabumpo curiously.
“No,” said Peg, giving the robe a few little shakes, “before that. And I remember this country, too, and the sun and the wind and the sky. If I’d only been alive one day I wouldn’t remember them, would I?”
“Queer things happen in Oz,” said Kabumpo comfortably. “But why bother? You are alive and very jolly. You are traveling with the most Elegant Elephant in Oz and in the company of a Prince. Isn’t that enough?”
Peg Amy did not reply but kept on beating the plush robe with determined little thumps and staring off through the trees with a very puzzled expression in her painted blue eyes. They had traveled swiftly all morning through the fertile farmlands of the Winkies and had paused for lunch in this little grove. Peg, not needing food, and Kabumpo, finding plenty of tender branches handy, had remained together while Wag and the Prince sought more nourishing fare.
Many a little Winkie farmer had stared in amazement as Peg and Pompa passed that morning but so fast did Kabumpo and Wag travel that before the Winkies were half sure of what they had seen there was nothing but a cloud of dust to wonder over and exclaim about.
“If you had a pair of scissors, I could
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