oggle-Bug?"
"Move on!" said a gruff policeman, who came along swinging his club.
And the Woggle-Bug obediently moved on, his brain working fast and
furious in the endeavor to think of a way to procure seven dollars and
ninety-three cents.
You see, in the Land of Oz they use no money at all, so that when the
Woggle-Bug arrived in America he did not possess a single penny. And no
one had presented him with any money since.
"Yet there must be several ways to procure money in this country," he
reflected; "for otherwise everybody would be as penniless as I am. But
how, I wonder, do they manage to get it?"
Just then he came along a side street where a number of men were at
work digging a long and deep ditch in which to lay a new sewer.
"Now these men," thought the Woggle-Bug, "must get money for shoveling
all that earth, else they wouldn't do it. Here is my chance to win the
charming vision of beauty in the shop window!"
Seeking out the foreman, he asked for work, and the foreman agreed to
hire him.
"How much do you pay these workmen?" asked the highly magnified one.
"Two dollars a day," answered the foreman.
"Then," said the Woggle-Bug, "you must pay me four dollars a day; for I
have four arms to their two, and can do double their work."
"If that is so, I'll pay you four dollars," agreed the man.
The Woggle-Bug was delighted.
"In two days," he told himself, as he threw off his brilliant coat and
placed his hat upon it, and rolled up his sleeves; "in two days I can
earn eight dollars--enough to purchase my greatly reduced darling and
buy her seven cents worth of caramels besides."
He seized two spades and began working so rapidly with his four arms
that the foreman said: "You must have been forewarned."
"Why?" asked the Insect.
"Because there's a saying that to be forewarned is to be four-armed,"
replied the other.
"That is nonsense," said the Woggle-Bug, digging with all his might;
"for they call you the foreman, and yet I only see one of you."
"Ha, ha!" laughed the man, and he was so proud of his new worker that
he went into the corner saloon to tell his friend the barkeeper what a
treasure he had found.
It was just after noon that the Woggle-Bug hired as a ditch-digger in
order to win his heart's desire; so at noon on the second day he quit
work, and having received eight silver dollars he put on his coat and
rushed away to the store that he might purchase his intended bride.
But,
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