The Gnome King's our friend, don't you like Kalico?"
"No!" said Pigasus fiercely, hurling himself into the air.
"Well, anyway, we're better off than we were before," thought Dorothy after several rhymed attempts to draw Pigasus into a conversation. "At least we now know where Ozma is and have two kinds of magic and the promise of an army. Really we're getting on quite fast." But perhaps had she seen the King and his Chamberlain nodding their heads like two little China mandarins as she and Pigasus left the throne room, she would not have felt so cheerful.
"That's the last we'll ever see of her," chuckled Shoofenwaller, dropping a dried lizard instead of a lump of sugar into his tea. (Gnomes always flavor their tea with lizards.) "No one yet has ever come safely back from Thunder Mountain. But what about this new Emperor of Oz?"
"Oh, that will be all right!" Kalico waved one hand airily. "I would much rather have a man on the throne of Oz. Ozma is always involving me in wars or demanding the rights of smaller Kingdoms, so long may she stay in Thunder Mountain and long Skamperoo rule in Oz!"
"Long live the Emperor!" echoed Shoofenwaller, and clicking their teacups gaily together, the two bad little Gnomes drained to the last drop their black and bitter tea. And we should not be too hard on Kalico, I suppose, for like all the dwellers under the earth, his heart is gray and flinty as the rock that forms his cavern, the blood in his veins cold and sluggish as the leaden waters of the underground rivers that wind sullenly through his dark domain.
[CHAPTER 14]
The Emperor of Oz
The same morning Dorothy wakened in the rustic summer house of the Winkie farmer, Skamperoo opened his eyes upon the unaccustomed grandeur of Ozma's Royal Palace. The banquet had lasted till long after three o'clock, then still chuckling and yawning, he had waved goodnight to his hilarious and amiable subjects and led Chalk off to bed. Twenty footmen with twenty lighted tapers preceded him to Ozma's own apartment, but dismissing this as too plain and simple, he had taken the immense green guest suite across the hall. Chalk would have much preferred a stall in the Royal Stable with the other four-footed members of the castle party, but Skamperoo would not hear of such a separation. He wanted his white wishing horse close at hand, not only because through him and the magic emeralds he could satisfy every wish, but because for the first time in his long, lazy, selfish life he had found someone he liked better than himself. In Skamperoo's eyes Chalk was absolutely perfect, and as his own wish had brought the golden-maned charger into being, he felt proud and important as a parent with his first child.