“How rude, how rough, how awfully wasteful—
The lady’s manners are dis—dis—?”
“Gusting,” panted Dorothy—who was too frightened to make a rhyme.
“Can you fight?” she asked breathlessly, helping Percy to his feet. “I think there’s going to be a fight. Look!”
Percy snatched up the cake of soap that had felled him and turned to see what was coming. Through the clouds of steam that hung over the mountain top there suddenly burst a terrible company.
Toto hid his head in Dorothy’s blouse and the Forgetful Poet could think of no verse to express his feelings. No wonder! A charge of wild wash women is enough to frighten the bravest traveller and that is exactly what was coming. An army of wash women armed with long bars of soap, bottles of blueing, clothes props, wash boards, tubs and baskets. They were huge and fat, with rolled-up sleeves and cross, red faces, and the faster they ran the crosser they grew, and the crosser they grew the faster they ran.
“Doesn’t seem polite to fight the ladies, but—” Percy raised his arm and flung the cake with all his might at the head of the advancing army. It struck her smartly on the nose and, with a howl of rage, she dropped her wash tub and rushed upon the two helpless adventurers.
“Wash their faces! Iron their hands and wring their necks!” she roared hoarsely.
“What are you doing here you—you—scutter-mullions!”
Before either could answer, and Percy was racking his brains to think of a word to rhyme with scutter-mullions, she had Dorothy by one arm and the Forgetful Poet by the other, shaking them until they couldn’t have spoken had they tried—while the others pressed so close (as Dorothy told Ozma afterwards) it’s a wonder they weren’t smothered on the spot. But at last, weary of shaking them, the wild wash woman flung them down upon a rock.
“You’re a disgrace to our mountain!” she panted angrily. “Look at your clothes!” (To be quite truthful Dorothy and the Forgetful Poet were looking shabby and dusty in the extreme.)