“‘Do you know who I am?’ it growled. ‘No, you don’t; but I’ll show you. I am the Woog. Do you hear that? The Woog! Don’t forget that. What did I hear you talking about just now? You were talking about fairies. Don’t say you weren’t, for I heard you.’
“‘Well,’ says one of the Looking-glass Children, ‘what harm is there in that?’
“‘Harm!’ screamed the Woog. ‘Do you want to defy me? I have caught and killed and crushed and smoked out all the fairies that ever lived on the earth, except a few that have hid themselves in this Looking-glass country. What harm, indeed!—a pretty question to ask me, when I’ve spent years and years trying to run down and smother out the whole fairy tribe.’
“The Looking-glass Children,” Chickamy Crany Crow continued, “told the Woog that they didn’t know there was any harm in the fairies themselves, or in talking about them. The Woog paid no attention to their apologies. He just stood and glared at them through his green goggles, gnashing his teeth and clenching his hands.
“Says the monster after awhile, ‘How dare any of you wish that you could see a fairy, or that you had a fairy godmother? What shall I do with you? I crushed a whole population of fairies between the lids of this book’ (he held up a big book, opened it, and clapped it together again so hard that it sounded like some one had fired off a gun), ‘and I’ve a great mind to smash every one of you good-for-nothing children the same way.’
“You may be sure that by this time the poor little Looking-glass Children were very much frightened, especially when they saw that the Woog was fixing to make an attack on them. He dropped his big book, and when the children saw him do this they broke and run: some went one way and some another. The last they saw of him, he was rushing through the bushes like a blind horse, threshing his arms about, and doing more damage to himself than to anybody else. But the children had a terrible scare, and if he hasn’t made way with some of them it’s not because he is too good to do it.”
“The poor dears!” exclaimed Mrs. Meadows sympathetically.
“Dat ar creetur can’t come out’n dat Lookin’-glass like de yuthers, kin he?” inquired Drusilla, moving about uneasily: “kaze ef he kin, I’m gwine ’way fum here. I dun seed so many quare doin’s an’ gwine’s on dat I’ll jump an’ holler ef anybody pints der finger at me.”
“Well, Tar-Baby,” replied Mr. Rabbit with some dignity, “he hasn’t never come out yet. That’s all that can be said in that line. He may come out, but if he does you’ll be in no danger at all. The Woog would never mistake you for a fairy, no matter whether he had his green goggles on or whether he had them off.”
“No matter ’bout dat,” remarked Drusilla. “I mayn’t look like no fairy, but I don’t want no Woog fer ter be cuttin’ up no capers ’roun’ me. I tell you dat, an’ I don’t charge nothin’ fer tellin’ it. Black folks don’t stan’ much chance wid dem what knows ’em, let ’lone dem ar Woog an’ things what don’t know ’em. Ef you all hear ’im comin’, des give de word, and I boun’ you’ll say ter yo’se’f dat Drusilla got wings. Now you min’ dat.”