l to life."

"Oh! A Patchwork Girl? What is that?" Ojo asked, for this seemed even
more strange and unusual than a Glass Cat.

"I think I must show you my Patchwork Girl," said Margolotte, laughing
at the boy's astonishment, "for she is rather difficult to explain. But
first I will tell you that for many years I have longed for a servant to
help me with the housework and to cook the meals and wash the dishes. No
servant will come here because the place is so lonely and
out-of-the-way, so my clever husband, the Crooked Magician, proposed
that I make a girl out of some sort of material and he would make her
live by sprinkling over her the Powder of Life. This seemed an excellent
suggestion and at once Dr. Pipt set to work to make a new batch of his
magic powder. He has been at it a long, long while, and so I have had
plenty of time to make the girl. Yet that task was not so easy as you
may suppose. At first I couldn't think what to make her of, but finally
in searching through a chest I came across an old patchwork quilt, which
my grandmother once made when she was young."

"What is a patchwork quilt?" asked Ojo.

"A bed-quilt made of patches of different kinds and colors of cloth, all
neatly sewed together. The patches are of all shapes and sizes, so a
patchwork quilt is a very pretty and gorgeous thing to look at.
Sometimes it is called a 'crazy-quilt,' because the patches and colors
are so mixed up. We never have used my grandmother's many-colored
patchwork quilt, handsome as it is, for we Munchkins do not care for any
color other than blue, so it has been packed away in the chest for about
a hundred years. When I found it, I said to myself that it would do
nicely for my servant girl, for when she was brought to life she would
not be proud nor haughty, as the Glass Cat is, for such a dreadful
mixture of colors would discourage her from trying to be as dignified as
the blue Munchkins are."

"Is blue the only respectable color, then?" inquired Ojo.

"Yes, for a Munchkin. All our country is blue, you know. But in other
parts of Oz the people favor different colors. At the Emerald City,
where our Princess Ozma lives, green is the popular color. But all
Munchkins prefer blue to anything else and when my housework girl is
brought to life she will find herself to be of so many unpopular colors
that she'll never dare be rebellious or impudent, as servants are
sometimes liable to be when they are made the same way their m