Snip thought he had never seen a more interesting traveller and, feeling happier than he had since he left Kimbaloo, and quite hopeful of finding Pajuka, he began to examine the surrounding country. The Fare-well had spilled them into a large field of wheat and, from several purple barns in the distance, Snip knew they were still in the land of the Gillikens.
"You'll have to be guide, Snip," sighed the tailor, gazing around with a bewildered expression. "I've lived so long with the Blanks that I know nothing of these parts at all. As for the Emerald City, I can't remember even hearing of it."
"Well, I've never been there," admitted Snip, "but I know it is in the very center of Oz and we were going south when Mombi threw me down the well. So if we can find out which direction is south we ought to reach the Emerald City by night time. Which way do you think it is?"
The tailor squinted doubtfully up at the sun and, after a few more useless guesses, they determined to take a chance and started diagonally across the field.
"I wonder what shape Mombi did turn the King into," muttered Snip, as they hurried along through the wheat. "And I wonder whether Ozma can change Pajuka back to his own self again. He's so tired of being a goose!"
"It must be pretty tiresome," observed Tora, pushing his specs up on his forehead, "though no worse than tailoring from morning till night for a city full of invisible and ungrateful rascals. Not that I mind the tailoring," he explained hastily, looking down sideways at Snip. "I love that, and say, I'd like to make you a little suit sometime when I've set up my shop. No, it wasn't the tailoring, but the imprisonment that I minded."
"Do you 'spose they've missed you yet? What will they do when they find you're gone?" chuckled the little button boy. He looked up expectantly, but the old man was staring thoughtfully over an olive tree and did not seem to hear Snip's question.
"Bother!" exclaimed Snip. "His ears have gone off again. How awfully inconvenient!"
"I always let them off after breakfast," explained the tailor apologetically and just as if he had read Snip's thoughts. "It rests them, you know."