Just then the Elephant, who had mysteriously appeared from a pantry in one corner of the room, shouted out, "All cross over!" and the animals began to crowd out of the house into the courtyard, and then, pushing in great confusion through a large gateway, rushed across the street and into the house on the other side of the way. Dorothy was quite taken off her feet in the rush, but, watching her chance, she hid behind a large churn that was standing conveniently in the middle of the street; and when they had all passed in, she ran away down the street as fast as she could go.
She ran on until she had got quite out of the Ferryman's street, and was walking along in the open country, feeling quite pleased with herself for having so cleverly escaped from the dancing-party without having to take the trouble of saying "Good night" to the Elephant, when she saw, in the moonlight, something white lying beside the road, and going up to it, she discovered it was a letter.
CHAPTER XII
THE CARAVAN COMES HOME
The letter was lying on a flat stone, with several lumps of sugar laid on it like paper-weights to keep it from blowing away. It wasn't at all a nice-looking letter; in fact, it looked as if it had been dragged over the ground for a long distance; and Dorothy, after observing all this, was just turning away when she chanced to look at the address and saw that the letter was intended for her. The address was written in a very cramped little hand, and the writing was crowded up into one corner as if it were trying to get over the edge of the envelope; but the words were "To Dorothy," as plain as possible.
"What a very strange thing!" she said to herself, taking up the letter and turning it over several times rather distrustfully. "I don't think it looks very nice, but it may be something important, and I s'pose I ought to read it"; and saying this, she opened the letter. It was printed in funny little letters something like bird-tracks, and this was what was in it:
We are in a bad fix. The fix is a cage. We have been seezed in a outburst of ungovernerubble fury by Bob Scarlet. He says there's been too many robbin pies. He goes on, and says he is going to have a girl pie. With gravy. We shreeked out that we wasn't girls. Only disgized and tuff as anything. He says with a kurdling laff we'll do. O save us. We wish we was home. There is no male and we send this by a noble rat. He is a female.
The Caravan.
"Now, that's the most ridiculous letter I ever got," said Dorothy, gazing at it in blank astonishment; "and I don't think it's spelled very well either," she added rather doubtfully as she read it again; "but of course I must go and help the poor little creatures. I ought to feel frightened, but I really feel as brave as an ox. I s'pose that's because I'm going to help the unfortunate"; and putting the letter in her pocket, she started off.
"It's perfectly surprising," she said to herself as she ran along, "the mischief they get into! They're really no more fit to be going about alone than so many infants"; and she was so pleased with herself for saying this that she began to feel quite large and bold. "But it was very clever of 'em to think of the rat," she went on, "and of course that accounts for the sugar. No one but a rat would ever have thought of using sugar for paper-weights. If I wasn't afraid of a rat I'd wish it hadn't gone away, though, for I haven't the slightest idea where the Caravan is, or which way I ought to go."