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GRAMPA IN OZ
[Illustration: Grampa was an old soldier who had fought in Nine Hundred
and Eighty Battles]
GRAMPA IN OZ
by
RUTH PLUMLY THOMPSON
Founded on and continuing the Famous Oz Stories by L. Frank Baum,
“Royal Historian of Oz”
Illustrated by John R. Neill
The Reilly & Lee Co., Chicago
Copyright, 1924 by The Reilly & Lee Co.
Dear Boys and Girls:
This book is all about an old soldier called Grampa, a young Prince, a
lost Princess and a weather cock named Bill. I might never have known a
thing about them if Dorothy had not been mixed up in the story. But if
there is any excitement in Oz, that girl is bound to be right in the
middle of it, and her adventures with Grampa, Prince Tatters and Bill
are the most curious that have happened in a year of Oz days. Really!
“I hope the other boys and girls will like Grampa as much as I do,” says
Dorothy, and I hope so too, for I’m awfully fond of the old soldier.
I hear from Glinda that Mombi the witch is up to some mischief, so I
must hurry off to the Emerald City at once. If it is true I’ll tell you
all about it in the next story. Now please do write me some more of
those jolly letters and tell me any Oz news you may hear. Will you?
Meanwhile, lots of love, good wishes and good times to you!
Ruth Plumly Thompson.
Philadelphia,
July, 1924.
This book is dedicated, with deep affection, to Uncle Billy
(Major William J. Hammer)
Author, inventor and second cousin to Santa Claus
Ruth Plumly Thompson
List of Chapters
1 A Rainy Day in Ragbad
2 The Wise Man Speaks
3 The Blue Forest of Oz
4 The Baffled Bandits
5 Down the Hollow Tree
6 The Wizard’s Garden
7 The Winding Stairway
8 Strange Happenings in Perhaps City
9 Dorothy Meets a New Celebrity
10 Prince Forge John of Fire Island
11 Into the Volcano
12 The Island of Isa Poso
13 Tatters Receives the Reward
14 On Monday Mountain
15 The Finding of Fumbo’s Head
16 Princess Dorothy Escapes
17 The Adventurers Meet
18 The Mischievous Play Fellows
19 Back to Perhaps City
20 The Prophet Confesses
21 Urtha Is Transformed
22 Rejoicing in Ragbad
CHAPTER 1
A Rainy Day in Ragbad
King Fumbo of Ragbad shook in his carpet slippers. He had removed his
red shoes, so he could not very well shake in them.
“My dear,” quavered the King, flattening his nose against the cracked
pane, “will you just look out of this window and tell me what you see?”
“_My Dear_” was really the Queen of Ragbad and years ago, when she had
first come to the old red castle on the hill, she had worn her crown
every day and was always addressed as “Your Majesty!” But as time passed
and affairs in the kingdom had gone from bad to worse, _My Dear_, like
many another Queen, had taken off her crown, put on her thimble and
become plain Mrs Sew-and-Sew, and with all her sewing she had barely
been able to keep the kingdom from falling to pieces. She was stitching
a patch on the King’s Thursday cloak at this very minute I am telling
you about.
“What now!” gasped the poor lady, and rushing to the window she also
pressed her nose to the pane.
“Do you see what I see?” choked King Fumbo, clutching at her hand.
“I see a great cloud rolling over Red Mountain,” panted Mrs Sew-and-Sew.
“I see the red geese flying before the wind. I see—” Here she gave a
great bounce and brushed past her husband—“I see my best patch work
quilt blowing down the highway!” moaned Mrs Sew-and-Sew, stumbling
across the room.
“Ruination!” spluttered the King as the door slammed after his wife.
“Shut the bells! Ring the windows; fetch Prince Tatters and call my red
umbrella! Grampa! Scroggles! Where is every Ragbad-body?”
Grampa, as it happened, was in the garden and Grampa was an old soldier
with a game leg who had fought in nine hundred and eighty Ragbad battles
and beaten everything, including the drum. Just now he was beating the
carpet. Tatters, the young Prince of Ragbad, was off on a picnic with
the Redsmith, and Scroggles, the footman-of-all-work about the castle,
was mending a hole in the roof, so none of them heard the King’s calls.
Finally, seeing that no one was coming to carry out his commands, Fumbo
began to carry them out himself. First he clutched his red beard and
jumped clear out of his carpet slippers. Next he slammed the window on
his thumb. With his thumb in his mouth he hurled himself upon the bell
rope, pulling it so violently the cord broke and dropped him upon his
back. Having failed to ring the bell, he wrung his hands—and well he
might, for the room had grown dark as pitch and the wind was howling
down the chimney like a pack of hungry gollywockers.
“I’ll get my umbrella,” muttered King Fumbo, scrambling to his feet, but
just as he reached the door, ten thousand pounds of thunder clapped the
castle on the back and so startled poor Fumbo that he fell through the
door and all the way down ten flights of steps. And worse still, when he
finally did pick himself up, instead of running into the throne room, he
plunged out into the garden and the storm broke right over his
head—broke with such flashing of lightning and crashing of thunder, and
lashing of tree tops, that the King and such other luckless Ragbadians
as were out were flung flat on their noses, and the ones who were
indoors crept under beds and into cupboards and wished they had been
better than they had been. Even Grampa—who was far and away the bravest
man in the country—even Grampa, after one look at the sky, rolled
himself in the carpet he had been beating and lay trembling like a
tobacco leaf.
“This will certainly spoil the rag crop,” sighed Grampa dismally, and as
he spoke right out in this frank fashion of the chief industry of
Ragbad, I’d better tell you a bit more about the country itself, for I
can see your nose curling with curiosity and curly noses are not nearly
so becoming as they used to be.
To begin with, Ragbad is in Oz—a small patch of a kingdom way down in
the southwestern corner of the Quadling country. In the reign of Fumbo’s
father it had been famous for its chintz and tapis trees, its red
ginghams and calico vines, its cotton fields and its fine linens and
lawns. Indeed, at one time, all the dress goods in Oz had been grown in
the gardens of Ragbad.
But when Fumbo came to the throne, he began to spend so much time
reading and so much money for books and tobacco that he soon emptied the
treasury and had no money to pay the chintz and gingham pickers, nor to
send the lawns to the laundry—they were always slightly dusty from being
trodden on—and one after another the workers of Ragbad had been forced
to seek a living in other lands, so that now there were only
twenty-seven families left, and the cotton fields and calico bushes, the
chintz and tapis trees, from lack of care and cultivation, ran perfectly
wild and yielded—instead of fine bolts of material—nothing but shreds,
tatters and rags.
The twenty-seven remaining Ragbadians, including the Redsmith, the
Miller, the Baker and twenty-four rustic laborers, after a vain attempt
to do the work of twenty-seven hundred, gave up in despair and became
common rag-pickers. From these rags, which fortunately were still
plentiful, Mrs Sew-and-Sew and the good wives of Ragbad made all the
clothing worn in the kingdom, besides countless rag rugs, and the money
obtained from the sale of these rugs was all that kept the little
country from absolute and utter ruin.
Of the splendid courtiers and servitors surrounding Fumbo’s father only
three remained, for I regret to say that neither the servants nor the
old nobility had been able to stand the hardships attendant upon
poverty, and they had left in a body the first morning Mrs Sew-and-Sew
had served oatmeal without cream for breakfast. The army, too, had
deserted and marched off to Jinxland because the King could not buy them
new uniforms, so that only three retainers were left in the old red
castle on hill. Pudge, the oldest and fattest of the wise men, had
stayed because he was fond of his room in the tower and of Mrs
Sew-and-Sew’s coffee. Scroggles, the second footman, had stayed because
he had old-fashioned notions of his duty, and Grampa, though long since
discharged from active service, had stuck to his post like the gallant
old soldier he was, and as there were no battles to fight, he tended the
furnace, weeded the gardens and helped King Fumbo and Mrs Sew-and-Sew
bring up their son to as fine a young Prince as any in Oz.
It was of Prince Tatters—during all this bluster—that Grampa was
thinking as he lay shivering under the carpet, and as soon as the
thunder stopped hammering in his ears he stuck out his head. The wind,
after snatching off ten roofs, the wings from the red mill and shaking
all the little cottages till their very chimneys chattered, had rushed
away over Red Mountain. It was still raining, but Grampa, seeing that
the worst was over, crawled out of the carpet and began to look for
trouble. And what do you s’pose he found? Why, the King, or at least,
the best part of the King!
“Ragamercy!” shrieked the old soldier, jumping behind a tapis tree, a
thing he had never done in all of those nine hundred and eighty battles.
But his conduct does not surprise me at all, for Fumbo had lost his head
in the storm, and was running wildly around without it—stumbling over
bushes and vines and stamping his stockinged feet in a perfect frenzy of
fright and fury. Now, of course, you will say at once that Fumbo is not
first King to lose his head and I can only answer that he is the first I
ever heard of who went on living without it, and if Ragbad were not in
the wonderful Land of Oz I should say at once that the thing was
impossible. In Oz, however, one may come apart, but no one ever dies; so
here was poor Fumbo, with his head clean off, as live and lively as
ever.
Breathing hard, Grampa peered around the tapis tree again to see whether
his eyes had deceived him. But no, it was the King, without a doubt, and
without his head. “Whatever will Mrs Sew-and-Sew do now,” groaned
Grampa, and pulling his campaign hat well down over his ears dashed out
and seizing Fumbo’s arm began splashing through the garden, dragging the
King along after him. Mrs Sew-and-Sew had already reached the castle and
was sitting on the broken-springed sofa that served for a throne,
sneezing violently. She had not only rescued her quilt, but she had
caught a frightful cold. All the colors in the quilt had run together,
and this last calamity so upset the poor lady that she began sobbing and
sneezing by turns. But right in the middle of the fifteenth sneeze, she
looked up and saw the old soldier with the game leg standing in the
doorway.
“Now don’t be frightened,” begged Grampa, advancing stiffly and dripping
water all over the rug. “Don’t be alarmed, but at the same time prepare
yourself for a blow.”
Mrs Sew-and-Sew, with her damp kerchief in her hand, had already been
preparing herself for a blow, but now, dropping the handkerchief, she
sneezed instead and when, glancing over Grampa’s shoulder she caught
sight of the King, she sneezed again and fainted dead away and rolled
under the sofa.
“This is worse than a battle,” puffed Grampa, dashing between the King
and the Queen, for every time he tried to help Mrs Sew-and-Sew the King
fell over a chair or upset a table.
“Halt! About face and wheel to your left, can’t you?” roared the old
soldier, mopping his forehead. But to these instructions Fumbo, having
no face about him, paid no attention. Instead he wheeled to the right
and swept all the ornaments from the mantel down on the old soldier’s
head, and then jumped on Grampa’s good foot so hard that Grampa forgot
for a moment he was a King, and thumped him in the ribs. Then, muttering
apologies, the old soldier seized a curtain cord and tied Fumbo to a red
pillar. This done, he reached under the sofa, pulled out Mrs
Sew-and-Sew, and having nothing else handy gave her a huge pinch of
snuff. Just as she came to, in from the garden, splashing water in every
direction, rushed Prince Tatters and in from the kitchen pelted Pudge,
the aged Wise Man.
“The rag crop is ruined and the King will lose his head!” panted Pudge,
who had a bad habit of predicting events after they had occurred.
“Has lost his head,” corrected Grampa, jerking his thumb over his
shoulder.
“But Grampa!” Stumbling across the room, Prince Tatters shook the old
soldier by the arm. “When—how—why—what will he do?”
“Do without it,” sighed the old soldier, glancing uneasily at Fumbo.
“The King has lost his head, long live his body!” wheezed Pudge,
rolling up his eyes.
“Now don’t cry, my dear!” begged Grampa, scowling reprovingly at Pudge
and patting Mrs Sew-and-Sew on the shoulder. “Having no head really
saves one no end of trouble. No face to wash! No more headaches, no ear
aches, no tooth aches!” Grampa’s voice grew more and more cheerful. “No
lectures to listen to, no spectacles to hunt, no hair to lose, no more
colds to catch in it. Why he is really better off without a head!”
But Mrs Sew-and-Sew refused to be comforted and rocking to and fro
moaned, “What shall we do! What shall we do? What shall we do?”
“I tell you,” proposed Pudge, pursing up his lips importantly. “Let’s
all have a strong cup of coffee.” As this seemed a sensible suggestion
they all filed into the big red kitchen of the castle, leaving Fumbo
kicking his heels against the stone pillar.