keep still for long.

"Course it's stone," answered Betsy scornfully. "Can't you see?"

"Yes," said Scraps, going closer, "I can _see_ the wall, but I can't
_feel_ it." And then, with her arms outstretched, she did a very queer
thing. She walked right into the wall and disappeared.

"For goodness sake!" cried Dorothy amazed, as indeed they all were.

[Illustration]

The High Coco-Lorum of Thi

[Illustration]

CHAPTER 9

And now the Patchwork Girl came dancing out of the wall again.

"Come on!" she called. "It isn't there. There isn't any wall at all."

"What! No wall?" exclaimed the Wizard.

"Nothing like it," said Scraps. "It's a make-believe. You see it, but it
isn't. Come on into the city; we've been wasting time."

With this she danced into the wall again and once more disappeared.
Button-Bright, who was rather venturesome, dashed away after her and
also became invisible to them. The others followed more cautiously,
stretching out their hands to feel the wall and finding, to their
astonishment, that they could feel nothing because nothing opposed them.
They walked on a few steps and found themselves in the streets of a very
beautiful city. Behind them they again saw the wall, grim and forbidding
as ever; but now they knew it was merely an illusion, prepared to keep
strangers from entering the city.

But the wall was soon forgotten, for in front of them were a number of
quaint people who stared at them in amazement, as if wondering where
they had come from. Our friends forgot their good manners, for a time,
and returned the stares with interest, for so remarkable a people had
never before been discovered in all the remarkable Land of Oz.

Their heads were shaped like diamonds and their bodies like hearts. All
the hair they had was a little bunch at the tip top of their
diamond-shaped heads and their eyes were very large and round and their
noses and mouths very small. Their clothing was tight-fitting and of
brilliant colors, being handsomely embroidered in quaint designs with
gold or silver threads; but on their feet they wore sandals, with no
stockings whatever. The expression of their faces was pleasant enough,
although they now showed surprise at the appearance of strangers so
unlike themselves, and our friends thought they seemed quite harmless.

"I beg your pardon," said the Wizard, speaking for his party, "for
intruding upon you uninvited, but we are traveling on important business
and