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CHAPTER 13 - THE TRUTH POND
It seems a long time since we have heard anything of the Frogman and Cayke
the Cookie Cook, who had left the Yip Country in search of the diamond-
studded dishpan which had been mysteriously stolen the same night that
Ozma had disappeared from the Emerald City. But you must remember that
while the Frogman and the Cookie Cook were preparing to descend from their
mountaintop, and even while on their way to the farmhouse of Wiljon the
Winkie, Dorothy and the Wizard and their friends were encountering the
adventures we have just related.
So it was that on the very morning when the travelers from the Emerald City
bade farewell to the Czarover of the City of Herku, Cayke and the Frogman
awoke in a grove in which they had passed the night sleeping on beds of
leaves. There were plenty of farmhouses in the neighborhood, but no one
seemed to welcome the puffy, haughty Frogman or the little dried-up Cookie
Cook, and so they slept comfortably enough underneath the trees of the grove.
The Frogman wakened first on this morning, and after going to the tree where
Cayke slept and finding her still wrapped in slumber, he decided to take a
little walk and seek some breakfast. Coming to the edge of the grove, he
observed half a mile away a pretty yellow house that was surrounded by a
yellow picket fence, so he walked toward this house and on entering the yard
found a Winkie woman picking up sticks with which to build a fire to cook her
morning meal.
"
For goodness sake!" she exclaimed on seeing the Frogman. "What are you
doing out of your frog-pond?"
"
I am traveling in search of a jeweled gold dishpan, my good woman," he
replied with an air of great dignity.
"
You won't find it here, then," said she. "Our dishpans are tin, and they're
good enough for anybody. So go back to your pond and leave me alone." She
spoke rather crossly and with a lack of respect that greatly annoyed the
Frogman.
"
Allow me to tell you, madam," said he, "that although I am a frog, I am the
Greatest and Wisest Frog in all the world. I may add that I possess much
more wisdom than any Winkie--man or woman--in this land. Wherever I go,
people fall on their knees before me and render homage to the Great Frogman!
No one else knows so much as I; no one else is so grand, so magnificent!"
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