"Netty? Is that now my name?" Planetty pushed back her flying cloud of hair with an interested sniff.
"If you like it," said Randy, his ears turning quite red at Kabumpo's teasing remarks. Leading the little Princess to a flat rock, he sat her down with great ceremony and then began opening up boxes of crackers and fruit.
"Netty's a nite name," decided the Princess, her head thoughtfully on one side. "I must tell Thun."
Skipping over to the Thunder Colt, who with drooping head and tail was enjoying a little colt nap, she tapped out her new nickname in the strange code she used when talking to him.
"No longer Planetty of Anuther Planet!" flashed Thun, awake in a twinkling and sending up his message in a shower of sparks. "But Anetty of Oz!"
"At least he's left off the N," mumbled Kabumpo, speaking thickly through the cocoanut cake which he had tossed whole into his capacious mouth. "Sounds rather well, don't you think?"
"Wonderful!" agreed Randy, who could scarcely keep his eyes off the sparkling little Princess. "It's too bad she's not like us, Kabumpo, then she could go back to Oz and stay there always."
"If she were like us, she wouldn't be so interesting," said Kabumpo, shaking his head judiciously. "Besides, down here the poor child is completely out of her element and liable to disintegrate or suffocate or Ev knows what—" he went on, discarding a box of prunes for a carton of tea.
"How was the cake?" Randy changed the subject, for he could not bear to think of Planetty in danger of any sort.
"Stale," announced Kabumpo, making a wry face as he swallowed some tea leaves. "I'll certainly be glad to catch up with some regular elephant food. This eating bits out of boxes is diabolical—simply diabolical! Here, give me those crackers and eat some of that other stuff. And look at little Netty Ann, would you, shaking out that blanket as if she'd been traveling with us for years. Why, the lass is a born housewife!"