"Yes, why don't you?" urged Bettsy Bobbin, coming over to put her arm around Dorothy's waist. "I'll go up with you and lend you my very best smelling salts."
"Lie down—with that big fat interloper on the throne of Oz!" wailed Dorothy. Squirming out of Bettsy's embrace, she started indignantly to her feet. "You must be crazy! Camy! Kabumpo! Snufferbux! Toto! You—you'll believe me, won't you?" Hurrying over to the second table, Dorothy looked pleadingly down the long board from the Hungry Tiger at the head to the Cowardly Lion at the foot.
"There, there," mumbled Kabumpo, lifting Dorothy up in his trunk. "Don't go on so, my dear, we all have these little funny spells. Here, sit up on my back so you'll have a good view of the Emperor when he arrives. Hi—there he comes now! Ray! Ray! Way for Skamperoo, Emperor of Oz!" Waving Dorothy in his trunk as if she had been a flag, Kabumpo plopped down on his knees and banged his big head three times on the polished floor. From her precarious position Dorothy saw the same fat imposter who had been in the throne room riding his white charger pompously into the Banquet Hall, the horse nodding to the left and right and grinning like a Cheshire Cat.
Cheers, bows and a loud burst of applause and music made his entry so noisy Dorothy's angry protests and cries were entirely drowned out. Disgusted, confused and completely bewildered by the behavior of Ozma's subjects and her own best friends, Dorothy jerked away from Kabumpo and darted through a long French window into the garden. What could it mean? What could have happened? Had all her former memories of Oz been a dream? No, no! Violently Dorothy decided against such an idea. Rather was this fat emperor a dream—a maddening nightmare from which she would presently awaken. Leaning dizzily against a golden faun set near a crystal garden pool, Dorothy tried to find some reasonable explanation of the whole dreadful mixup. And here, several minutes later, Pigasus, the winged Pig, found her.
"Thought a little fly over the tree tops might help your head," grunted Pigasus, looking unhappily down his pink snout. "Nothing like a little fly for a headache, my girl!"
"My head's all right," answered Dorothy sullenly. "It's the rest of you who have lost your heads or your senses. How in Oz you could stand in there cheering that big, fat fraud, I'll never, never understand. Piggins, Piggins, dear—" Dorothy bent coaxingly over him—"surely you remember Ozma and the Wizard and Glinda." Instead of answering at once, Pigasus stared thoughtfully at his reflection in the pool.
"Suppose you sit on my back and then we can talk without being heard," he suggested brightly. "Up in the air we can air our views in safety, as it were."
"To tell the truth, I don't much care where I go now," sighed Dorothy, seating herself disconsolately on the pig's broad back.
"Hey Hey, we're bewitched and enchanted, I knew it!