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2. How Uncle Henry Got Into Trouble
Dorothy Gale lived on a farm in Kansas, with her Aunt Em and her Uncle
Henry. It was not a big farm, nor a very good one, because sometimes
the rain did not come when the crops needed it, and then everything
withered and dried up. Once a cyclone had carried away Uncle Henry's
house, so that he was obliged to build another; and as he was a poor
man he had to mortgage his farm to get the money to pay for the new
house. Then his health became bad and he was too feeble to work. The
doctor ordered him to take a sea voyage and he went to Australia and
took Dorothy with him. That cost a lot of money, too.
Uncle Henry grew poorer every year, and the crops raised on the farm
only bought food for the family. Therefore the mortgage could not be
paid. At last the banker who had loaned him the money said that if he
did not pay on a certain day, his farm would be taken away from him.
This worried Uncle Henry a good deal, for without the farm he would
have no way to earn a living. He was a good man, and worked in the
field as hard as he could; and Aunt Em did all the housework, with
Dorothy's help. Yet they did not seem to get along.
This little girl, Dorothy, was like dozens of little girls you know. She was
loving and usually sweet-tempered, and had a round rosy face and
earnest eyes. Life was a serious thing to Dorothy, and a wonderful thing,
too, for she had encountered more strange adventures in her short life
than many other girls of her age.
Aunt Em once said she thought the fairies must have marked Dorothy at
her birth, because she had wandered into strange places and had always
been protected by some unseen power. As for Uncle Henry, he thought
his little niece merely a dreamer, as her dead mother had been, for he
could not quite believe all the curious stories Dorothy told them of the
Land of Oz, which she had several times visited. He did not think that
she tried to deceive her uncle and aunt, but he imagined that she had
dreamed all of those astonishing adventures, and that the dreams had
been so real to her that she had come to believe them true.
Whatever the explanation might be, it was certain that Dorothy had been
absent from her Kansas home for several long periods, always
disappearing unexpectedly, yet always coming back safe and sound, with
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