ome to life again!

The Patchwork Girl, quickly recovering from her fright, now came nearer
and looked from one to another of the people with deep interest. Then
she looked at herself and laughed. Noticing the mirror, she stood
before it and examined her extraordinary features with amazement--her
button eyes, pearl bead teeth and puffy nose. Then, addressing her
reflection in the glass, she exclaimed:

"Whee, but there's a gaudy dame!
Makes a paint-box blush with shame.
Razzle-dazzle, fizzle-fazzle!
Howdy-do, Miss What's-your-name?"

She bowed, and the reflection bowed. Then she laughed again, long and
merrily, and the Glass Cat crept out from under the table and said:

"I don't blame you for laughing at yourself. Aren't you horrid?"

"Horrid?" she replied. "Why, I'm thoroughly delightful. I'm an
Original, if you please, and therefore incomparable. Of all the comic,
absurd, rare and amusing creatures the world contains, I must be the
supreme freak. Who but poor Margolotte could have managed to invent
such an unreasonable being as I? But I'm glad--I'm awfully glad!--that
I'm just what I am, and nothing else."

"Be quiet, will you?" cried the frantic Magician; "be quiet and let me
think! If I don't think I shall go mad."

"Think ahead," said the Patchwork Girl, seating herself in a chair.
"Think all you want to. I don't mind."

"Gee! but I'm tired playing that tune," called the phonograph, speaking
through its horn in a brazen, scratchy voice. "If you don't mind, Pipt,
old boy, I'll cut it out and take a rest."

The Magician looked gloomily at the music-machine.

"What dreadful luck!" he wailed, despondently. "The Powder of Life must
have fallen on the phonograph."

He went up to it and found that the gold bottle that contained the
precious powder had dropped upon the stand and scattered its
life-giving grains over the machine. The phonograph was very much
alive, and began dancing a jig with the legs of the table to which it
was attached, and this dance so annoyed Dr. Pipt that he kicked the
thing into a corner and pushed a bench against it, to hold it quiet.

"You were bad enough before," said the Magician, resentfully; "but a
live phonograph is enough to drive every sane person in the Land of Oz
stark crazy."

"No insults, please," answered the phonograph in a surly tone. "You did
it, my boy; don't blame me."

"You've bungled everything, Dr. Pipt," added the Glass Cat,
contemptuously