iced Professor Wogglebug, who had been quietly watching
the game.

"I don't like to interrupt the party," he began, approaching Ozma's
throne apologetically, "but I've just had a most brilliant idea!"

"What? Another?" murmured the Scarecrow, rolling up his eyes.

"Where did you lose it?" asked Jack Pumpkinhead, edging forward
anxiously.

"Lose it! Who said I'd lost it?" snapped the Professor, glaring at
poor Jack.

"Well, you said you'd had it, and had is the past tense, so--" Jack's
voice trailed off uncertainly, and Ozma, seeing he was embarrassed,
begged the Professor to explain.

"Your Highness!" began Professor Wogglebug, while the company settled
down in a resigned circle on the floor, "As Oz is the most
interesting and delightful country on the Continent of Imagination
and its people the most unusual and talented, I am about to compile a
Royal Book which will give the names and history of all our people.
In other words, I am to be the Great, Grand Genealogist of Oz!"

"Whatever that is," the Scarecrow whispered in Dorothy's ear.

"And," the Professor frowned severely on the Scarecrow, "with your
Majesty's permission, I shall start at once!"

"Please do," said the Scarecrow with a wave toward the door, "and we
will go on with the party!"

Scraps, the Patchwork Girl, who had been staring fixedly at the
Professor with her silver suspender-button eyes, now sprang to her
feet:

"What is a genealogist?
It's something no one here has missed;
What puts such notions in your head?
Turn out your toes--or go to bed!"

she shouted gaily, then, catching Ozma's disapproving glance, fell
over backwards.

"I don't understand it at all," said Jack Pumpkinhead in a depressed
voice. "I'm afraid my head's too ripe."

"Nor I," said Tik-Tok, the copper clockwork man. "Please wind me up a
lit-tle tight-er Dor-o-thy, I want to think!"

Dorothy obligingly took a key suspended from a hook on his back and
wound him up under his left arm. Everybody began to talk at once, and
what with the Cowardly Lion's deep growl and Tik-Tok's squeaky voice
and all the rest of the tin and meat and wooden voices, the confusion
was terrible.

"Wait!" cried Ozma, clapping her hands.

Immediately the room grew so still that one could hear Tik-Tok's
machinery whirring 'round.

"Now!" said Ozma, "One at a time, please, and let us hear from the
Scarecrow first."

The Scarecrow rose. "I think, your Highness," he