“Tell them, tell them!” She gave the leader of the tribe a playful push. “Oh, mother, may I have him?”
“My daughter is a Princess,” announced the wash woman grandly, “Princess of the Tubbies, and as this yellow bird pleases her he may remain.”
“And marry me?” exulted the Princess of Monday Mountain, clasping her fat hands in glee.
“Marry you!” shouted Percy Vere, springing to his feet. “Never! Absolutely no—domi-no! Dorothy. Dorothy, do you hear what they are saying?”
Dorothy did not, for she had both hands over her ears. The shouts and screams of the Tubbies, at Percy’s refusal to marry their Princess, were so shrill and piercing that she thought her head would split with the racket.
“To the wash tubs with them!” screamed the Queen furiously. “Wash their faces, wring their necks, hang them up to dry!”
And, seizing upon the luckless pair, the wild wash women bore them struggling and kicking to the top of Monday Mountain—Toto dashing after—and the herds of clothes horses that graze on the mountain side scattering in every direction as they passed.
