o Unc Nunkie and kissed the old man's marble face very
tenderly.

"I'm going to try to save you, Unc," he said, just as if the marble
image could hear him; and then he shook the crooked hand of the Crooked
Magician, who was already busy hanging the four kettles in the
fireplace, and picking up his basket left the house.

The Patchwork Girl followed him, and after them came the Glass Cat.

Chapter Six

The Journey

Ojo had never traveled before and so he only knew that the path down
the mountainside led into the open Munchkin Country, where large
numbers of people dwelt. Scraps was quite new and not supposed to know
anything of the Land of Oz, while the Glass Cat admitted she had never
wandered very far away from the Magician's house. There was only one
path before them, at the beginning, so they could not miss their way,
and for a time they walked through the thick forest in silent thought,
each one impressed with the importance of the adventure they had
undertaken.

Suddenly the Patchwork Girl laughed. It was funny to see her laugh,
because her cheeks wrinkled up, her nose tipped, her silver button eyes
twinkled and her mouth curled at the corners in a comical way.

"Has something pleased you?" asked Ojo, who was feeling solemn and
joyless through thinking upon his uncle's sad fate.

"Yes," she answered. "Your world pleases me, for it's a queer world,
and life in it is queerer still. Here am I, made from an old bedquilt
and intended to be a slave to Margolotte, rendered free as air by an
accident that none of you could foresee. I am enjoying life and seeing
the world, while the woman who made me is standing helpless as a block
of wood. If that isn't funny enough to laugh at, I don't know what is."

"You're not seeing much of the world yet, my poor, innocent Scraps,"
remarked the Cat. "The world doesn't consist wholly of the trees that
are on all sides of us."

"But they're part of it; and aren't they pretty trees?" returned
Scraps, bobbing her head until her brown yarn curls fluttered in the
breeze. "Growing between them I can see lovely ferns and wild-flowers,
and soft green mosses. If the rest of your world is half as beautiful I
shall be glad I'm alive."

"I don't know what the rest of the world is like, I'm sure," said the
cat; "but I mean to find out."

"I have never been out of the forest," Ojo added; "but to me the trees
are gloomy and sad and the wild-flowers seem lonesome. It must be nic