"Maybe what?" wheezed the dummy, raising his head about an inch and blinking at her curiously. "Say, who pulled me out of the brook?"
Dorothy gave a little scream and then, recovering herself and swallowing hard, answered breathlessly, "I did!"
"Well, I'm supposed to be dead," puffed the dummy reproachfully. "Try to get that through your hair, can't you? I've just been thrown over the cliff by the revolutionists. You shouldn't have rescued me, little girl. It will spoil the picture. Is there a camera man anywhere about?"
"Camera?" gasped Dorothy faintly, "Oh, I don't know." It had been a long time since Dorothy had been in America, and there had been very few moving pictures in those old days on the Kansas farm. But Trot, who had come to Oz from San Francisco, had told Dorothy a lot about the screen stars and moving picture stunts. As she recalled Trot's stories, Dorothy clapped her hands. Smiling at the dummy she said, "I know! You're a moving picture dummy, aren't you?"
"Right the first time," said the dummy, as he raised his head another inch and smiled approvingly at Dorothy. "I take all the risks," he explained complacently. "I fall for the stars. Now this star was a foolish old King, but the last star I fell for was a shooting star--a cow-boy, you know. I was thrown from a horse under a stampeding herd of steers," he mused dreamily, "and had to be entirely remade.
"But you had better run along now, little girl. I'm supposed to be dead. It doesn't hurt," he observed graciously, as Dorothy continued to stare at him in amazement. "I've died a hundred times and know all about it. Run along now, like a good child." Lowering his head, he settled down resignedly in the mud and stared stolidly up at the sky.
"Well, of course if you prefer to be dead," began Dorothy a bit stiffly, "I'll go. But why you should want to lie there in the mud, when the sun is shining and everything so nice and interesting, I don't see. You're not dead at all. You're as alive as I am!"
The dummy sat bolt upright at Dorothy's words and started to pinch himself curiously. "Why so I am," he puffed, rubbing his nose thoughtfully with his stuffed and pudgy finger. "Sit down again my dear, until I get used to the idea of it, will you? It feels very odd and dangerous!" He shook one leg, then the other and rose unsteadily to his feet.