"Where, Dorothy?" asked the Fox.
"Here!"
The Boy and the Woman and the Rabbit now joined the Fox and the Lamb, and they all stood before the Glass Cat and speaking together, almost like a chorus, asked: "Have you seen the Black Bag?""Often," replied the Glass Cat, "but not lately.""It's lost," said the Fox, "and we must find it.""Are you the Wizard?" asked the Cat.
"Yes."
"And who are these others?"
"I'm Dorothy," said the Lamb.
"I'm the Cowardly Lion," said the Munchkin boy.
"I'm the Hungry Tiger," said the Rabbit.
"I'm Gugu, King of the Forest," said the fat Woman.
The Glass Cat sat on its hind legs and began to laugh. "My, what a funny lot!" exclaimed the Creature. "Who played this joke on you?""It's no joke at all," declared the Wizard. "It was a cruel, wicked transformation, and the Magician that did it has the head of a lion, the body of a monkey, the wings of an eagle and a round ball on the end of his tail."The Glass Cat laughed again. "That Magician must look funnier than you do," it said. "Where is he now?""Somewhere in the forest," said the Cowardly Lion. "He just jumped into that tall maple tree over there, for he can climb like a monkey and fly like an eagle, and then he disappeared in the forest.""And there was another Magician, just like him, who was his friend,"added Dorothy, "but they probably quarreled, for the wickedest one changed his friend into the form of a Goose.""What became of the Goose?" asked the Cat, looking around.
"He must have gone away to find his friend," answered Gugu the King.
"But a Goose can't travel very fast, so we could easily find him if we wanted to.""The worst thing of all," said the Wizard, "is that my Black Bag is lost. It disappeared when I was transformed. If I could find it Icould easily break these enchantments by means of my magic, and we would resume our own forms again. Will you help us search for the Black Bag, Friend Cat?""Of course," replied the Glass Cat. "But I expect the strange Magician carried it away with him. If he's a magician, he knows you need that Bag, and perhaps he's afraid of your magic. So he's probably taken the Bag with him, and you won't see it again unless you find the Magician.""That sounds reasonable," remarked the Lamb, which was Dorothy.
"Those pink brains of yours seem to be working pretty well to-day.""If the Glass Cat is right," said the Wizard in a solemn voice, "there's more trouble ahead of us. That Magician is dangerous, and if we go near him he may transform us into shapes not as nice as these.""I don't see how we could be any WORSE off," growled Gugu, who was indignant because he was forced to appear in the form of a fat woman.
"Anyway," said the Cowardly Lion, "our best plan is to find the Magician and try to get the Black Bag from him. We may manage to steal it, or perhaps we can argue him into giving it to us.""Why not find the Goose, first?" asked Dorothy. "The Goose will be angry at the Magician, and he may be able to help us.""That isn't a bad idea," returned the Wizard. "Come on, Friends;let's find that Goose. We will separate and search in different directions, and the first to find the Goose must bring him here, where we will all meet again in an hour."
