laughed a silvery ripple of laughter
as she said:

"Very well done, my good Jinjur; I admire your energy and judgment. But
I had no idea a monkey could look so comical as this monkey did while he
was being bathed."

"I'm _not_ a monkey!" declared Woot, resentfully; "I'm just a boy in a
monkey's shape, that's all."

"If you can explain to me the difference," said Jinjur, "I'll agree not
to wash you again--that is, unless you foolishly get into the fireplace.
All persons are usually judged by the shapes in which they appear to the
eyes of others. Look at _me_, Woot; what am _I_?"

Woot looked at her.

"You're as pretty a girl as I've ever seen," he replied.

Jinjur frowned. That is, she tried hard to frown.

"Come out into the garden with me," she said, "and I'll give you some of
the most delicious caramels you ever ate. They're a new variety, that no
one can grow but me, and they have a heliotrope flavor."

Ozma and Dorothy

[Illustration]

CHAPTER 12

In her magnificent palace in the Emerald City, the beautiful girl Ruler
of all the wonderful Land of Oz sat in her dainty boudoir with her
friend Princess Dorothy beside her. Ozma was studying a roll of
manuscript which she had taken from the Royal Library, while Dorothy
worked at her embroidery and at times stooped to pat a shaggy little
black dog that lay at her feet. The little dog's name was Toto, and he
was Dorothy's faithful companion.

To judge Ozma of Oz by the standards of our world, you would think her
very young--perhaps fourteen or fifteen years of age--yet for years she
had ruled the Land of Oz and had never seemed a bit older. Dorothy
appeared much younger than Ozma. She had been a little girl when first
she came to the Land of Oz, and she was a little girl still, and would
never seem to be a day older while she lived in this wonderful
fairyland.

Oz was not always a fairyland, I am told. Once it was much like other
lands, except it was shut in by a dreadful desert of sandy wastes that
lay all around it, thus preventing its people from all contact with the
rest of the world. Seeing this isolation, the fairy band of Queen
Lurline, passing over Oz while on a journey, enchanted the country and
so made it a Fairyland. And Queen Lurline left one of her fairies to
rule this enchanted Land of Oz, and then passed on and forgot all about
it.

From that moment no one in Oz ever died. Those who were old remained
old; those who were young and