Such a wail went up at this awful deed that she ran away out of the city, fearing some one would put poison in her candy, since she had no other food.
“I suppose I shall get somewhere if I keep walking; and I can’t starve, though I hate the sight of this horrid stuff,” she said to herself, as she hurried over the mountains of Gibraltar Rock that divided the city of Saccharissa from the great desert of brown sugar that lay beyond.
Lily marched bravely on for a long time, and saw at last a great smoke in the sky, smelt a spicy smell, and felt a hot wind blowing toward her.
“I wonder if there are sugar savages here, roasting and eating some poor traveller like me,” she said, thinking of Robinson Crusoe and other wanderers in strange lands.
She crept carefully along till she saw a settlement of little huts very like mushrooms, for they were made of cookies set on lumps of the brown sugar; and queer people, looking as if made of gingerbread, were working very busily round several stoves which seemed to bake at a great rate.
“I’ll creep nearer and see what sort of people they are before I show myself,” said Lily, going into a grove of spice-trees, and sitting down on a stone which proved to be the plummy sort of cake we used to call Brighton Rock.
Presently one of the tallest men came striding toward the trees with a pan, evidently after spice; and before she could run, he saw Lily.
“Hollo, what do you want?” he asked, staring at her with his black currant eyes, while he briskly picked the bark off a cinnamon-tree.
“I’m travelling, and would like to know what place this is, if you please,” answered Lily, very politely, being a little frightened.
“Cake-land. Where do you come from?” asked the gingerbread man, in a crisp tone of voice.