The stomach.
Mother: I was just thinking about going back through the folding doors through which I came, when a door opened in the back part of the throat, and I began to slide downstairs. Such queer stairs you never saw. They seemed to grow larger as I went down, and smaller at the top, so they kept pushing me, and I could not go back if I would.
Percy: I suppose it was the same way when I swallowed a button the other day. I wanted it back badly enough, but it wouldn’t come.
Helen: That shows you should never put such things as pins and buttons in your mouth.
Elmer: And what did the kitchen look like?
Mother: Like no room you ever saw in your life. I looked around for the corners, but there were none. It is shaped some like an egg. Here is a picture, which will help you to understand the shape of the room.
You see it has two doors, or openings,—one at which to go in, and the other to pass out. The walls are a pale pink color and are full of wrinkles if the room is empty. When the master of the house sends down so much bread or other food that it fills the kitchen full, the walls become smooth and the room is larger, but when the food first begins to go down, it finds the room quite small, and the walls full of folds, or wrinkles.
This room is very strong, as there are really three walls, one inside the other. The pink lining inside is made of wet skin, something like that found in the room upstairs. The middle wall is made of muscles, which cross one another in different ways; for the kitchen has many of these useful servants. The outer coat, or “overcoat,” of the stomach has for its work to pour out a kind of water to keep the walls moist so they will not stick to other things which are packed so closely in the trunk of the body. I am sure no person could ever pack so many things in a trunk the same size without crowding some of them or getting them out of order.
Helen: But I would like to know who acts as cook in this curious kitchen.