"Look out of
the window, and tell me what you see."
182
Tip ran to the window and looked out.
"The palace is surrounded by a double row of girl soldiers," he announced.
"I thought so," returned the Scarecrow. "We are as truly their prisoners as
we were before the mice frightened them from the palace."
"My friend is right," said Nick Chopper, who had been polishing his breast
with a bit of chamois-leather. "Jinjur is still the Queen, and we are her
prisoners."
"But I hope she cannot get at us," exclaimed the Pumpkinhead, with a shiver
of fear. "She threatened to make tarts of me, you know."
"Don't worry," said the Tin Woodman. "It cannot matter greatly. If you stay
shut up here you will spoil in time, anyway. A good tart is far more
admirable than a decayed intellect."
"Very true," agreed the Scarecrow.
"Oh, dear!" moaned Jack; "what an unhappy lot is mine! Why, dear father, did
you not make me out of tin -- or even out of straw -- so that I would keep
indefinitely."
"Shucks!" returned Tip, indignantly. "You ought to be glad that I made you
at all." Then he added, reflectively, "everything has to come to an end,
some time."
183
"But I beg to remind you," broke in the Woggle-Bug, who had a distressed
look in his bulging, round eyes, "that this terrible Queen Jinjur suggested
making a goulash of me -- Me! the only Highly Magnified and Thoroughly
Educated Woggle-Bug in the wide, wide world!"
"I think it was a brilliant idea," remarked the Scarecrow, approvingly.
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