Page:The Royal Book of Oz.djvu/34

 called out, with a cheerful chuckle:

"Come on out my dear Rattles. Not a bad place at all, and here's breakfast already waiting!"

"Breakfast!" The Scarecrow turned over cautiously. A huge and curious creature was slashing through the grass toward him. A smaller and still more curious one followed. Both were extremely damp and had evidently just come out of the river.

"Good morning!" quavered the Scarecrow, sitting up with a jerk, and at the same time reaching for a stick that lay just behind him.

"I won't eat it if it talks—so there!" The smaller creature stopped and stared fixedly at the Scarecrow.

The Scarecrow, hearing this, tried to think of something else to say, but the appearance of the two was so amazing that, as he told Dorothy afterwards, he was struck dumb. The larger was at least two hundred feet long and made entirely of blocks of wood. On each block was a letter of the alphabet. The head was a huge square block with a serpent's face and long curling tape measure tongue. The little one was very much smaller and seemed to consist of hundreds of rattles, wood, celluloid and rubber, fastened together with wires. Every time it 30