“Stop!” grunted Piecer, letting go Scrapper’s coat-tails to which he up to this time had dutifully clung. “Stop! I can go no farther.”
“Don’t leave me,” wailed poor Scrapper, rolling his eyes backward in great distress. Neither of the Quilties had been out of Patch before and the prospect was truly terrifying. Now, whether the magic spool heard the two conversing is hard to tell but, quite suddenly, it stopped and sinking down by the roadway, Piecer and Scrapper began to mop their foreheads with their patched handkerchiefs and fan themselves with their hats.
“Let’s go back,” quavered Piecer in a low voice.
“But we cannot go back without a ruler,” objected Scrapper, who was the bolder of the two. “If we do not find a ruler in four days you very well know that Patch and all of the Quilties will go to pieces. Do you want to go to pieces?” he asked severely.
“No!” said Piecer mournfully, “I don’t, but we’ll go to pieces anyway, running on at this rate. Something is wrong,” puffed the Prime Piecer dolefully. “The spool never took us out of the Kingdom before. It’s twisted, I tell you, and dear knows where it will take us.”
“It will take us to the next ruler,” declared Scrapper, who had recovered some of his breath and most of his courage. “It is our duty to follow. Come!”
“Oh, very well,” sighed Piecer, rising to his feet with a great groan, “but don’t blame me if it leads us into a forest and we are torn to bits by bears.”
As Piecer finished this cheering speech the thread in Scrapper’s hand gave a little pull. The golden spool had started off again. This time, however, it rolled along more slowly and, in spite of their uneasiness, the two Quilties cast interested glances to the right and left. It was all so different from their own patched and shabby little Kingdom. Pleasant yellow cottages and farms dotted the landscape, and the fields and meadows, full of buttercups and daisies, did not look a bit dangerous. On the hill a splendid tin castle shone and glittered in the sun, and though Scrapper and Piecer were quite unaware of it, this was the residence of the Tin Woodman, who ruled over The Land of the East.
Nowhere in Oz is there a more cheerful land than the Country of the Winkies. But just as the two travellers were beginning to enjoy themselves, the spool turned sharply off the highway and plunged down a steep hill. The first jerk flung Scrapper on his face, and as Piecer had hold of his coat-tails he lost his balance too, and over and over they rolled to the bottom.
“Now for the next ruler!” gasped Scrapper. Scrambling to his feet, and without pausing to brush off the dust, he bounded after the spool. It was fairly whistling ahead now, bouncing over rocks and tree stumps, so that the two Patchy Statesmen, in their endeavor to keep up with it, looked like a couple of boys playing leap frog. When it did stop Piecer was too giddy to see, but Scrapper gave a loud roar of anger.