miral was
already quite absorbed in taking in various points of interest with his
glass. The storks, meanwhile, had crowded into the coach after the
animals, and had their heads out through all the windows as if there
were no room for them inside. This gave the coach somewhat the
appearance of a large chicken-coop with too many chickens in it; and as
Dorothy didn't fancy a crowd, she climbed up on the box. As she did so,
Sarah, the Camel, put her head out of the front window and, laying it
in Dorothy's lap, murmured, "Good-evening," and went comfortably to
sleep. The next moment the fiddles in the air began playing again and
the stage-coach sailed away.

* * * * *

Dorothy never knew exactly what happened next, because everything was so
confused. She had an idea, however, that they were all singing the Ferry
Song, and that they had just got to a new part, beginning--

"It pours into picnics and swishes the dishes,"

when a terrible commotion began on top of the coach, and she saw that
Bob Scarlet had suddenly appeared inside the cage _without his
waistcoat_, and that the Caravan were frantically squeezing themselves
out between the wires. At the same moment a loud roaring sound arose in
the air, and the quadrupeds and the storks began jumping out of the
windows in all directions. Then the stage-coach began to rock violently,
and she felt that it was about to roll over, and clutched at the neck of
the Camel to save herself; but the Camel had slipped away, and she found
she had hold of something like a soft cushion--and the next moment the
coach went over with a loud crash.

[Illustration: "IT SLOWLY CHANGED TO A BIRD-CAGE WITH A ROBIN SITTING IN
IT."]

Dorothy gave a little scream as the coach went over, and then held her
breath; but instead of sousing into the water as she expected, she came
down on top of it with a hard bump, and, very much to her astonishment,
found herself sitting up on a carpeted floor. For a moment the
rat-trap, with Bob Scarlet inside of it, seemed to be floating around in
the air like a wire balloon, and then, as she rubbed her eyes and looked
again, it slowly changed into a bird-cage with a fat robin sitting in it
on a perch, and peering sharply at her sideways with one of his bright
little eyes; and she found she was sitting on the floor of the little
parlor of the Blue Admiral Inn, with her little rocking-chair overturned
beside her and the cushion fir