"Back talk!" cried Dorothy, clutching him suddenly by the sleeve. "Oh, that's just what they are talking, Humpy. They're talking 'back talk.' Wait a minute!" Closing her eyes, Dorothy began writing imaginary letters in the air and, as the two woodsmen reached them, she burst out triumphantly, "It says 'The Back Woods' on that flag. Oh dear, I wished we were back and now we are!"
"You think awful fast," blinked the dummy admiringly. "The mere look of that language makes me dizzy. So they're talking back talk are they? Well, what do they say? Are they going to hit us?"
"They're telling us to go away," muttered Dorothy, putting her fingers in her ears, for the two leaders had been joined by a hundred more and all were screaming at the top or rather, I should say, the bottom of their voices. They kept their backs to the travellers and shouted the dreadful back talk over their shoulders. They all carried gleaming axes and, when Dorothy made an attempt to advance, they brandished them threateningly.
"If I could only talk back," wailed the little girl, "I'd tell them I am a Princess. Then maybe they'd let me through."
"Couldn't you write it?" suggested Humpy, looking at the angry horde with growing alarm.
"Why, how did you think of that?" Dorothy stared at him in honest amazement. Then, feeling in her pocket, she brought out a stub of pencil and a crumpled piece of paper. The woodsmen watched her curiously over their shoulders as she slowly wrote her message.
