ertaken.

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 bed-quilt 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 nicer
where there are no trees and there is room for lots of people to live
together."

"I wonder if any of the people we shall meet will be as splendid as I
am," said the Patchwork Girl. "All I have seen, so far, have pale,
colorless skins and clothes as blue as the country they live in, while I
am of many gorgeous colors--face and body and clothes. That is why I am
bright and contented, Ojo, while you are blue and sad."

"I think I made a mistake in giving you so many sorts of brains,"
observed the boy. "Perhaps, as the Magician said, you have an overdose,
and they may not agree with you."

"What had you to do with my brains?" asked Scraps.

"A lot," replied Ojo. "Old Margolotte meant to give you only a few--just
enough to keep you going--but when she wasn't looking I added a good
many more, of the best kinds I could find in the Magician's cupboard."

"Thanks," said the girl, dancing along the path ahead of Ojo and then
dancing back to his side. "If a few brains are