"No, we'd better wait," advised Dorothy, "for Kabumpo can travel a hundred times faster than we can, and a hundred times faster than Mombi can."
"While we are waiting," suggested Tora, who had been carefully threading his needle, "I'll mend your frock, my dear. Have you any more buttons, Snip?"
Snip felt in his pockets and brought out a handful of gold and silver buttons and as Dorothy stood shading her eyes and keeping an anxious lookout for Kabumpo, Tora sewed them neatly in place.
"It must have been mighty queer, growing up all at once," observed the old tailor, biting off his thread and giving the little girl an affectionate pat on the shoulder.
"It was," answered Dorothy, groaning at the recollection. "I can't imagine what happened to me, but then everything's very queer lately."
With her frock neatly buttoned, Dorothy began to feel more like herself. She thanked Tora sweetly and smilingly invited him to tell them something about himself.
"Yes, do," urged Snip, coming to stand beside her.
"Well," sighed the old man, sticking his needle back in his lapel and taking off his specs, "there's not much to tell. I'm a tailor, as you can readily see. How I got to Blankenburg, I don't know, but there I've been for so long that it gives me rheumatism to think of it. But it's all over now. When we reach this marvelous city you two young people speak of, I shall set up a shop and live happily ever afterward."
"What? With those ears?" shouted Humpy, falling up against a tree. "Oh, I don't believe it!"
"Hush," begged Dorothy and, turning apologetically to the tailor, she whispered earnestly: "You really mustn't mind Humpy. You see his head is stuffed with hair and it makes him kind of ridiculous." The tailor chuckled under his breath and Snip giggled outright.
Just at this moment Kabumpo, magnificent in his pearls and velvet robes, swung ponderously into view.
"Dorothy," trumpeted the Elegant Elephant, stopping a good twenty feet from the little group and elevating his trunk haughtily, "what are you doing with those shabby fellows? Don't you realize you're a Princess? A tailor! Great Grump! Do you expect me to associate with a tailor?"
"But gaze upon his ears," cried Humpy, waving his cloak triumphantly at Tora. "They wag, wiggle and fly off by themselves. And we're hunting a king, a witch and a goose. Hurry up, you elegant old thing, we need you in this picture."