ful sob. So he turned away and crept back to his home in the
prose-bush--where, all this time, his wife had been sitting in plain
sight on her own toadstool, grimly hemming the doorknob. At her feet
lay her faithful Snoodle.

Up to this time, Sara had not ventured to address the Teacup. But, as
she looked around and saw her still sitting there, so pleasant and
bland and fragile, and with such a consanguineous handle, she felt a
sudden certainty that the Teacup would always be kind and helpful; so
she suggested timidly,

"Then we shan't need the onions?"

"Oh, dear, yes," answered the Teacup, in a soft, wrinkled voice. "We'd
never in Zeelup be able to get the pieces of the dimple to Schlorge
without first anaesthetizing the Snimmy."

Sara jumpled: that awful word again! Her head reeled (exactly as heads
do in grown-up stories) as she realized how many things there were in
this strange place that she didn't know. Who was Schlorge, for
example? And how was she to get anything to anybody without getting
up? And "anaesthetize"?

She hated to disturb the Teacup; she was knitting so placidly, and
murmuring over and over to herself, "Never in Zeelup." She looked up
into the tree; the Plynck, too, had fallen asleep, worn out by the
unwonted excitement of the morning; and her lovely Echo also slept in
the amber pool. Sara now noticed that, though the Plynck was
rose-colored, her Echo was cerulean.

The great, soft, curled plumes of the Plynck and her Echo rippled as
they breathed and slept, rather like water or fire in a little wind;
and with every ripple they seemed to shake out a faint perfume that
drifted across Sara's face in waves. And they both looked so lovely
that she could not think of disturbing them, either. So she looked
about to see if there might be any one else who could enlighten her.

And there at her elbow, as luck would have it, stood a Koopf. Up to
this time, Sara had not been able to tell a Koopf from a Gunkus. To be
sure, there isn't any difference, really; but you would think that any
fairly imaginative child ought to be able to tell one. However, Sara
now saw that the ground was swarming with Gunki.

"Do you know who Schlorge is?" asked Sara, rather timidly.

At first the Koopf only grinned. "Guess I do," he managed to say at
last. Then he surprised and rather startled her by winking his left
ear at her. "He's the best dimplesmith ever," he said at last.
"He's--he's--" he began looking all about