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Why, she's gone!" exclaimed the boy, and turned to see his companions still

waving their hands in token of adieu to the vanished Polychrome.

Chapter Twenty-Four

The Curtain Falls

Well, the rest of the story is quickly told, for the return Journey of our

adventurers was without any important incident. The Scarecrow was so

afraid of meeting the Hip-po-gy-raf, and having his straw eaten again, that

he urged his comrades to select another route to the Emerald City, and they

willingly consented, so that the Invisible Country was wholly avoided.

Of course, when they reached the Emerald City their first duty was to visit

Ozma's palace, where they were royally entertained. The Tin Soldier and

Woot the Wanderer were welcomed as warmly as any strangers might be

who had been the traveling companions of Ozma's dear old friends, the

Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman.

At the banquet table that evening they related the manner in which they had

discovered Nimmie Amee, and told how they had found her happily married

to Chopfyt, whose relationship to Nick Chopper and Captain Fyter was so

bewildering that they asked Ozma's advice what to do about it.

You need not consider Chopfyt at all," replied the beautiful girl Ruler of Oz.

If Nimmie Amee is content with that misfit man for a husband, we have not

even just cause to blame Ku-Klip for gluing him together."

"I think it was a very good idea," added little Dorothy, "for if Ku-Klip hadn't

used up your castoff parts, they would have been wasted. It's wicked to be

wasteful, isn't it?"

Well, anyhow," said Woot the Wanderer, "Chopfyt, being kept a prisoner by

his wife, is too far away from anyone to bother either of you tin men in any

way. If you hadn't gone where he is and discovered him, you would never

have worried about him."

"What do you care, anyhow," Betsy Bobbin asked the Tin Woodman, "so long

as Nimmie Amee is satisfied?"

"And just to think," remarked Tiny Trot, "that any girl would rather live with

a mixture like Chopfyt, on far-away Mount Munch, than to be the Empress

of the Winkies!"

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The Tin Woodman of Oz