Ozma of Oz | Page 7

country,
without even trolley-cars or tel'phones. The people here haven't been
discovered yet, I'm sure; that is, if there ARE any people. So I don't
b'lieve there CAN be any auto'biles, Billina."
"Perhaps not," admitted the yellow hen. "Where are you going now?"
"Over to those trees, to see if I can find some fruit or nuts," answered
Dorothy.
She tramped across the sand, skirting the foot of one of the little rocky
hills that stood near, and soon reached the edge of the forest.
At first she was greatly disappointed, because the nearer trees were all
punita, or cotton-wood or eucalyptus, and bore no fruit or nuts at all.
But, bye and bye, when she was almost in despair, the little girl came
upon two trees that promised to furnish her with plenty of food.
One was quite full of square paper boxes, which grew in clusters on all
the limbs, and upon the biggest and ripest boxes the word "Lunch"
could be read, in neat raised letters. This tree seemed to bear all the
year around, for there were lunch-box blossoms on some of the
branches, and on others tiny little lunch-boxes that were as yet quite
green, and evidently not fit to eat until they had grown bigger.

The leaves of this tree were all paper napkins, and it presented a very
pleasing appearance to the hungry little girl.
But the tree next to the lunch-box tree was even more wonderful, for it
bore quantities of tin dinner-pails, which were so full and heavy that
the stout branches bent underneath their weight. Some were small and
dark-brown in color; those larger were of a dull tin color; but the really
ripe ones were pails of bright tin that shone and glistened beautifully in
the rays of sunshine that touched them.
Dorothy was delighted, and even the yellow hen acknowledged that she
was surprised.
The little girl stood on tip-toe and picked one of the nicest and biggest
lunch-boxes, and then she sat down upon the ground and eagerly
opened it. Inside she found, nicely wrapped in white papers, a ham
sandwich, a piece of sponge-cake, a pickle, a slice of new cheese and
an apple. Each thing had a separate stem, and so had to be picked off
the side of the box; but Dorothy found them all to be delicious, and she
ate every bit of luncheon in the box before she had finished.
"A lunch isn't zactly breakfast," she said to Billina, who sat beside her
curiously watching. "But when one is hungry one can eat even supper
in the morning, and not complain."
"I hope your lunch-box was perfectly ripe," observed the yellow hen, in
a anxious tone. "So much sickness is caused by eating green things."
"Oh, I'm sure it was ripe," declared Dorothy, "all, that is, 'cept the
pickle, and a pickle just HAS to be green, Billina. But everything tasted
perfectly splendid, and I'd rather have it than a church picnic. And now
I think I'll pick a dinner-pail, to have when I get hungry again, and then
we'll start out and 'splore the country, and see where we are."
"Haven't you any idea what country this is?" inquired Billina.
"None at all. But listen: I'm quite sure it's a fairy country, or such things
as lunch-boxes and dinner-pails wouldn't be growing upon trees.

Besides, Billina, being a hen, you wouldn't be able to talk in any
civ'lized country, like Kansas, where no fairies live at all."
"Perhaps we're in the Land of Oz," said the hen, thoughtfully.
"No, that can't be," answered the little girl; because I've been to the
Land of Oz, and it's all surrounded by a horrid desert that no one can
cross."
"Then how did you get away from there again?" asked Billina.
"I had a pair of silver shoes, that carried me through the air; but I lost
them," said Dorothy.
"Ah, indeed," remarked the yellow hen, in a tone of unbelief.
"Anyhow," resumed the girl, "there is no seashore near the Land of Oz,
so this must surely be some other fairy country."
While she was speaking she selected a bright and pretty dinner-pail that
seemed to have a stout handle, and picked it from its branch. Then,
accompanied by the yellow hen, she walked out of the shadow of the
trees toward the sea-shore.
They were part way across the sands when Billina suddenly cried, in a
voice of terror:
"What's that?"
Dorothy turned quickly around, and saw coming out of a path that led
from between the trees the most peculiar person her eyes had ever
beheld.
It had the form of a man, except that it walked, or rather rolled, upon all
fours, and its legs were the same length as its arms,