Even at the last the Czarover tried to persuade them not to go near Ugu the Shoemaker, but they were resolved on the venture and the next morning bade the friendly monarch a cordial good-bye and, mounting upon their animals, left the Herkus and the City of Herku and headed for the mountains that lay to the west.
CHAPTER 13
It seems a long
time since we have
heard anything of
the Frogman and
Cayke the Cookie Cook, who had left the Yip Country in search of the diamond-studded gold dishpan which had been mysteriously stolen the same night that Ozma had disappeared from the Emerald City. But you must remember that while the Frogman and the Cookie Cook were preparing to descend from their mountain-top, and even while on their way to the farmhouse of Wiljon the Winkie, Dorothy and the Wizard and their friends were encountering the adventures we have just related.
So it was that on the very morning when the travelers from the Emerald City bade farewell to the Czarover of the City of Herku, Cayke and the Frogman awoke in a grove in which they had passed the night sleeping on beds of leaves. There were plenty of farmhouses in the neighborhood, but no one seemed to welcome the puffy, haughty Frogman or the little dried-up Cookie Cook, and so they slept comfortably enough underneath the trees of the grove.
The Frogman wakened first, on this morning, and after going to the tree where Cayke slept and finding her still wrapt in slumber, he decided to take a little walk and seek some breakfast. Coming to the edge of the grove he observed, half a mile away, a pretty yellow house that was surrounded by a yellow picket fence, so he walked toward this house and on entering the yard found a Winkie woman picking up sticks with which to build a fire to cook her morning meal.
"For goodness sakes!" she exclaimed on seeing the Frogman, "what are you doing out of your frog-pond?"
"I am traveling in search of a jeweled gold dishpan, my good woman," he replied, with an air of great dignity.