"Did she say you were a mutton boy?" asked Kabumpo, as he placed Snip beside the little girl.
"No, a button boy," corrected Dorothy hastily, "from the Kingdom of Kimbaloo, you know."
"Ah yes," grunted Kabumpo condescendingly, "I remember hearing of Kimbaloo--a buttony sort of place across the mountains from Pumperdink."
Snip was about to retort with something short and sassy, when Kabumpo lifted up the tailor and as Tora seemed terribly alarmed by the suddenness of his transit through the air, Snip helped him to settle comfortably instead of talking. He just got Tora firmly seated in time to catch Humpy, whom the Elegant Elephant tossed aloft as carelessly as he would a bale of hay.
"All ready?" boomed Kabumpo importantly. "Well, then here we go." And before anyone could answer he was off, moving swiftly and surely as a battleship through the waving billows of wheat.
"What did you find for lunch?" called Humpy curiously. Snip and Tora hadn't breath to say anything, and Dorothy was too worried about Ozma to want to talk. But Kabumpo, instead of answering, threw up his trunk, sending forth such a volley of shrill bellows that Snip's hair rose on end and the ears in Tora's pocket gave a terrified bounce. Humpy chuckled, as he listened to the shrill trumpeting of the Elegant Elephant. He had thought of a joke!
"Ah, he has eaten a trumpet vine," mused the dummy dreamily, as the noise died away. But it ceased for only a moment, for trumpeting was Kabumpo's way of clearing a path for himself and, determined to reach the capital before Mombi, the witch, he travelled as never before and, clinging to each other and to Kabumpo's harness and robe, the four riders made the best they could of the worst journey they had ever taken.
Kabumpo would never have stopped until he reached the Emerald City itself, had it not been for the mountain. Rushing like an express train from a small dim wood, the Elegant Elephant came unexpectedly upon a steep wall of rock. With a snort of surprise he stopped so sharply that everyone in the party went sailing over his head. Humpy, who was lightest, sailed farthest and, landing first, made a splendid cushion for Snip and Dorothy to fall on. Tora, fortunately, plumped into a patch of gooseberry bushes, so that no one was really hurt.