Kabumpo in Oz, Ruth Plumly Thompson [the snowy day read aloud TXT] 📗

“A lot you know!” said Seven, looking back scornfully, but Kabumpo was too interested to. care. Out of the windows of the big book houses leaped hundreds of the little Figure Heads, and they laughed and jeered at Pompa and Kabumpo. “Ho! Ho!” yelled one, leaning out so far it nearly fell on its Eight. “Wait till the Count sees ‘em. He’ll make an example of ‘em!”

“What an awful country,” whispered Pompadore, ducking just in time, as a Four snatched at his hair from an open window. But just then they turned a corner and entered a large gloomy court. Sitting on a square and solid wood throne, surrounded by a guard of Figure Heads, sat the Giant Ruler of this strange city. “What have you got there, seven?” roared the Ruler.

“I am the Elegant Elephant and this is the Prince of Pumperdink,” announced Kabumpo before Seven could answer. Pompadore, himself, could say nothing for he had never before been addressed by a wooden ruler in his life And that is exactly what the King of the Figure heads was—an ordinary school ruler, twice as large as a man, with arms and legs and a great square head set atop of his thin flat body.

“I don’t care a rap who you are. I want to know what you are?” said the Ruler. “We are travelers,” spoke up Pompa, swallowing hard-“travelers in search of a Proper Princess.”

“Well, you won’t find any here,” grunted the Ruler shortly. “We don’t believe in ‘em!”

“Would you mind telling me the name of your Kingdom,” asked Pompa, somewhat cast

down by these words.

“You have no heads,” announced the Ruler calmly, “or you would have known that this is Rith Metic. I,” he hammered himself upon the wooden chest— “I am its Ruler and every inch a King-King of the Figure Heads,” he added, glancing around as if he expected someone to contradict him.

“All right! All right!” wheezed Kabumpo, bowing his head twice. “I knew twelve inches made a foot rule, but I never knew they made a King Rule. But could you give us some luncheon and allow us to pass peaceably through your Kingdom?”

“Pass through!” exclaimed the King, standing up indignantly. “We don’t pass anyone through here. You’ve got to work your way through. Pass through, indeed! And when you’ve worked your way through we’ll put you in a problem and make an example of you.”

“They’ll make a very good example, your Majesty,” said a tall thin individual standing next to the Ruler. He eyed the two cunningly.

“If a thin Prince sets out on a fat elephant to find a Proper Princess, how many yards of fringe will the elephant lose from his robe and how bald will the Prince be at the end of the journey? I don’t believe anyone could figure “It might be done by subtraction,” said the

King, looking at the two critically.

“Great hay stacks!” rumbled Kabumpo, glaring over his shoulder to see if he had lost any fringe so far. “What have we gotten into?”

“Bald!” gulped Pompa, rubbing his head. “Do you mean to say you take poor innocent travelers and make them into arithmetic problems?”

“Why not?” said the thin one, who looked exactly like a giant lead pencil. “And please address me as Count, after this-Count It Up is my name. What’s the matter with living in a problem, my boy? Life is a problem, after all, and you will get used to it in time. I’ll try to assign you to a comfortable book and you’ll find book-keeping a lot more simple than housekeeping. This way, please!”

“Please go,” yawned the Ruler, waving his hand. “The Count will take you in charge now.” And so dazed was the Elegant Elephant by all this strange reasoning that he tamely followed the lead pencil person.

“Goodbye!” shouted the Ruler hoarsely. “Start them on simple additions,” he said as they moved off.

The street ahead was filled with Figure Heads and as Kabumpo paused they began forming themselves into sums. The first row sat down, the next knelt behind them, the third stood up, the fourth nimbly leaped upon the shoulders of the third, and so on, until a long addition confronted the travelers.

“Now,” said Count It Up in his blunt way, as you haven’t figures for heads, let us see if you have heads for figures.” Kabumpo pushed back his pearl headdress and drops of perspiration began to run down his trunk. Prince Pompa, lying flat on Kabumpo’s head, started to add up the first line of figures.

“Eighty-three,” he announced anxiously.

“Say three and eight to carry, snapped Count It Up. “Here, Three!” A Three stepped out of the crowd and placed itself under the line. “I’ve got to be carried!” cried Eight, looking sulkily at Pompa.

“Carried!” snorted Kabumpo, snatching Eight into the air. “Well, I’ll attend to you. You do the adding, Pompa, and I’ll do the carrying.”

He landed the Eight head down at the bottom of the line of Figure Heads and swung his trunk carelessly while he waited for his next victim. So, slowly and painfully, Pompa counted up the long lines and Kabumpo carried and if they made the slightest mistake the Figure Heads shouted with scorn and danced about till the confusion was terrible. When an example was finished, the Figure Heads in it marched away but another would immediately form lines ahead so that it took them a whole hour to go two blocks.

“Oh!” groaned Pompa at last, “We’ll never get through this, Kabumpo. Look at those awful fractions ahead! Can’t I skip fractions?” he asked looking pleadingly at Count It Up.

“Certainly not!” said the pencilly man stroking his shiny hair, which was straight and black and grew up into a sharp point. “You shall skip nothing!”

“That gives me an idea,” whispered Kabumpo huskily. “Why shouldn’t we skip altogether? We’re bigger than they are. Why-”

“How are you getting on?” At the sound of that hoarse, familiar voice both the Prince and Kabumpo jumped.

“You don’t mind me asking, I hope?” Clinging to the high picket fence and looking anxiously through the bars was the Curious Cottabus.

“Have you found the Greatest Common Divisor yet?”

“Who’s he?” asked the Elegant Elephant suspiciously.

“Isn’t there any way out of Rith Metic but this?” wailed Pompa, looking at the Cottabus pleadingly. He was too tired to mind being questioned.

The curious beast was delighted to have this new opportunity to talk to the travelers.

“Will you answer a few questions if I tell you?” asked the Cottabus, raising itself with great difficulty and looking over the palings.

“Yes-yes-anything,” promised Pompa.

“Do you care for strawberry tarts?” asked the Cottabus, twitching its nose very rapidly.

“Of course,” said the Prince. “Oh! Do hurry. Count It Up will be back in a moment!” He had run ahead to arrange a new problem and the rest of the Figure Heads paid no attention to the queer creature clinging to the palings.

“Are you going to invite the Scarecrow to your wedding?” gulped the Cottabus.

“I don’t know any scarecrow,” said Pompa, “so how could I?”

“Are you fond of that old elephant?” The Cottabus waved at Kabumpo, who stamped first one foot then another and fairly snorted with rage.

“All right,” sighed the Curious Cottabus, “that makes my fifty questions.”

Hanging on to the fence with one paw it waved the other backward and forward as it chanted:

“How many tics in Rith Metic?

Tell me that and tell me quick!

But if you can’t it’s not my fault,

So simply turn a wintersault!”

The head of the Cottabus disappeared.

“Now isn’t that provoking,” gulped the Prince. “After it promised to help us, too!”

“I meant summersault,” wheezed the Cottabus, reappearing suddenly-

“And if you can’t it’s not your fault,

So simply turn a summersault!”

it recited dolefully, and losing its balance fell off the fence and landed with a thud on the ground below.

“Here! Hurry along” scolded Count It Up, prodding Kabumpo with a sharp pencil. “The next is a nice little problem in fractions.”

“I wonder if it meant anything?” mused Pompadore, as Kabumpo approached the new problem. ” ‘If you can’t it’s not your fault, so simply turn a summersault.’ Anyway it wouldn’t hurt to try. Stop a minute, Kabumpo!”

Sliding down the Elegant Elephant’s trunk, the Prince put his head on the ground and very carefully and deliberately turned a somersault. At his first motion Count It Up gave a deafening scream, fell on his head and broke off his point, while the Figure Heads began to run in every direction.

“Do it again! Do it again!” cried Kabumpo joyfully. So Pompa turned another somersault and another, and another, and another, till not a Figure Head was in sight. Even the Figure Heads at the windows of the houses tumbled out and dashed madly around the corner. Before they could return, Kabumpo snatched up Pompa and tore through the deserted streets of Rith Metic till he came to the black iron gate at the other end of the city. Butting it open with his head, the Elegant Elephant dashed through and never stopped running till he was miles away from there.

“Have to rest a bit and eat some leaves,” puffed Kabumpo, at last slowing down. “Whe-w!”

“Wish I could eat leaves,” sighed the Prince, as Kabumpo began lunching off the tree tops. “But, never mind, we’re out of Rith Metic! Wasn’t it lucky that Cottabus followed us? I never would have thought of getting out of sums by somersaulting. Would you?”

“Only sensible thing it ever said, probably,” answered the Elegant Elephant, with his mouth full of leaves. “There’s a lot more to be learned by traveling than by studying, my boy. Somersaults for sums-let’s always remember that!”

Pompa did not answer. He slid down Kabumpo’s trunk and began hunting anxiously around for something to eat. Not far away he found a large nut tree and, gathering a handful of nuts, he sat down and began to crack them on a white marble slab near by. Next instant Kabumpo heard a thud and a muffled cry.

The Prince of Pumperdink had vanished, as if by magic.

“Where are you?” screamed the Elegant Elephant, pounding through the brush. “Pompa! Pompa! He’s disappeared,” gasped Kabumpo, rushing over to the marble slab. There was not a sign of the Royal Prince of Pumperdink anywhere, but carved carefully on the white stone were these words:

Please Knock Before You Fall In.

“Fall in!” snorted Kabumpo, his eyes rolling wildly. “Great Gooch!”