"I want to hear more of your adventures in the Forest of Gugu, and how you were able to get those dear little monkeys to use in Dorothy's Surprise Cake."

 

So they sat down on a marble bench near to the Fountain of the Water of Oblivion, and between them Dorothy and the Wizard related their adventures.

 

"I was dreadfully fussy¹ while I was a woolly lamb," said Dorothy, "for it didn't feel good, a bit. And I wasn't quite sure, you know, that I'd ever get to be a girl again."

 

"You might have been a woolly lamb yet, if I hadn't happened to have discovered that Magic Transformation² Word," declared the Wizard.

 

"But what became of the walnut³ and the hickory-nut into which you transformed those dreadful beast magicians?" inquired Ozma.

 

"Why, I'd almost forgotten them," was the reply; "but I believe they are still here in my pocket."

 

Then he searched in his pockets and brought out the two nuts and showed them to her.

 

Ozma regarded them thoughtfully.

 

"It isn't right to leave any living creatures in such helpless forms," said she. "I think, Wizard, you ought to transform them into their natural shapes again."

 

"But I don't know what their natural shapes are," he objected, "for of course the forms of mixed animals which they had assumed were not natural to them. And you must not forget, Ozma, that their natures were cruel and mischievous⁴, so if I bring them back to life they might cause us a great deal of trouble."

 

"Nevertheless," said the Ruler of Oz, "we must free them from their present enchantments⁵. When you restore them to their natural forms we will discover who they really are, and surely we need not fear any two people, even though they prove to be magicians and our enemies."

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