The Lost King of Oz

by Ruth Plumly Thompson

"Not butterflies, but butterfly ears!" gasped Snip, falling headlong from the cupboard with the shock of the thing.

"It's all right," smiled the tailor, adjusting the ears quickly and looking kindly over at Snip. "And dear, dear, what a strange story my left ear is telling me!"

"Do your ears tell you stories?" asked Snip, forgetting his own troubles for a moment.

"Yes. The left one tells me that an elephant has run off with a little girl," mused the tailor, wiping his specs. "Fancy that, now!"

Snip could hear a faint buzzing and eyed the old gentleman's ears with growing interest and respect.

"There, there, that will do," muttered the tailor at last, giving his left ear a little pinch. "I wish to hear this young gentleman's story, so please be quiet and attend."

Immediately both ears tilted toward Snip and, fearful lest they fly off before he could finish, the little button boy poured out the whole history of his adventures from the time he left Kimbaloo to his fall down the strange well.

"Ozma!" sighed the tailor, brushing his hand absently across his brow. "Is Ozma Queen of Oz now? I've been prisoner here so long I've forgotten everything. You say that this witch, Mombi, transformed and hid her father and now proposes to find and restore him to the throne? And the goose? Whom did you say he was?"

"Pajuka is the Prime Minister," puffed Snip hastily. "He's been trying for years and years to find the King himself. If someone doesn't help him soon, and get him away from Mombi, he'll be roasted or eaten or lost!"

Snip opened his hand, where still clutched in his moist grasp were the feathers he had pulled from Pajuka's wing as he fell down the well. The tailor leaned forward to examine them. As he did so, a gold feather separated itself from the white, fluttered for a moment in the air and then sailed straight through the window. It was the golden feather that, we know, took the magic message to the Emerald City, but as neither Snip nor the old tailor could follow its flight, they stood gaping after it in perfect astonishment.