"Oh, we'll have to hurry, we'll have to hurry!" exclaimed the little girl, clasping her hands anxiously, "for if Mombi reaches the Emerald City first something dreadful will happen. I'm glad the King of Oz is alive, but I'm not going to have Ozma turned to a piano. Oh dear! Oh dear! Why doesn't Kabumpo hurry back?"
"Hadn't we better start anyway?" asked Snip, who was growing more and more worried about Pajuka. He felt sure Mombi meant to get rid of the goose as soon as she found the King. "Let's go without the elephant," he proposed eagerly.
"No, we'd better wait," advised Dorothy, "for Kabumpo can travel a hundred times faster than we can, and a hundred times faster than Mombi can."
"While we are waiting," suggested Tora, who had been carefully threading his needle, "I'll mend your frock, my dear. Have you any more buttons, Snip?"
Snip felt in his pockets and brought out a handful of gold and silver buttons and as Dorothy stood shading her eyes and keeping an anxious lookout for Kabumpo, Tora sewed them neatly in place.
"It must have been mighty queer, growing up all at once," observed the old tailor, biting off his thread and giving the little girl an affectionate pat on the shoulder.
"It was," answered Dorothy, groaning at the recollection. "I can't imagine what happened to me, but then everything's very queer lately."
With her frock neatly buttoned, Dorothy began to feel more like herself. She thanked Tora sweetly and smilingly invited him to tell them something about himself.
"Yes, do," urged Snip, coming to stand beside her.
"Well," sighed the old man, sticking his needle back in his lapel and taking off his specs, "there's not much to tell. I'm a tailor, as you can readily see. How I got to Blankenburg, I don't know, but there I've been for so long that it gives me rheumatism to think of it. But it's all over now. When we reach this marvelous city you two young people speak of, I shall set up a shop and live happily ever afterward."