Chapter Five
A Terrible Accident
'It will take a few minutes for this powder to do its work,' remarked the Magician, sprinkling the body up and down with much care.
But suddenly the Patchwork Girl threw up one arm, which knocked the bottle of powder from the crooked man's hand and sent it flying across the room. Unc Nunkie and Margolotte were so startled that they both leaped backward and bumped together, and Unc's head joggled the shelf above them and upset the bottle containing the Liquid of Petrifaction.
The Magician uttered such a wild cry that Ojo jumped away and the Patchwork Girl sprang after him and clasped her stuffed arms around him in terror. The Glass Cat snarled and hid under the table, and so it was that when the powerful Liquid of Petrifaction was spilled it fell only upon the wife of the Magician and the uncle of Ojo. With these two the charm worked promptly. They stood motionless and stiff as marble statues, in exactly the positions they were in when the Liquid struck them.
Ojo pushed the Patchwork Girl away and ran to Unc Nunkie, filled with a terrible fear for the only friend and protector he had ever known. When he grasped Unc's hand it was cold and hard. Even the long gray beard was solid marble. The Crooked Magician was dancing around the room in a frenzy of despair, calling upon his wife to forgive him, to speak to him, to come to life again!
The Patchwork Girl, quickly recovering from her fright, now came nearer and looked from one to another of the people with deep interest. Then she looked at herself and laughed. Noticing the mirror, she stood before it and examined her extraordinary features with amazement – her button eyes, pearl bead teeth and puffy nose. Then, addressing her reflection in the glass, she exclaimed:
'Whee, but there's a gaudy dame! Makes a paint-box blush with shame. Razzle-dazzle, fizzle-fazzle! Howdy-do, Miss What's-your-name?'
She bowed, and the reflection bowed. Then she laughed again, long and merrily, and the Glass Cat crept out from under the table and said:
'I don't blame you for laughing at yourself. Aren't you horrid?'
'Horrid?' she replied. 'Why, I'm thoroughly delightful. I'm an Original, if you please, and therefore incomparable. Of all the comic, absurd, rare and amusing creatures the world contains, I must be the supreme freak. Who but poor Margolotte could have managed to invent such an unreasonable being as I? But I'm glad – I'm awfully glad! – that I'm just what I am, and nothing else.'
'Be quiet, will you?' cried the frantic Magician; 'be quiet and let me think! If I don't think I shall go mad.'
'Think ahead,' said the Patchwork Girl, seating herself in a chair. 'Think all you want to. I don't mind.'
'Gee! but I'm tired playing that tune,' called the phonograph, speaking through its horn in a brazen, scratchy voice. 'If you don't mind, Pipt, old boy, I'll cut it out and take a rest.'
The Magician looked gloomily at the music– machine.
'What dreadful luck!' he wailed, despondently. 'The Powder of Life must have fallen on the phonograph.'
He went up to it and found that the gold bottle that contained the precious powder had dropped upon the stand and scattered its life-giving grains over the machine. The phonograph was very much alive, and began dancing a jig with the legs of the table to which it was attached, and this dance so annoyed Dr. Pipt that he kicked the thing into a corner and pushed a bench against it, to hold it quiet.
'You were bad enough before,' said the Magician, resentfully; 'but a live phonograph is enough to drive every sane person in the Land of Oz stark crazy.'
'No insults, please,' answered the phonograph in a surly tone. 'You did it, my boy; don't blame me.'
'You've bungled everything, Dr. Pipt,' added the Glass Cat, contemptuously.
'Except me,' said the Patchwork Girl, jumping up to whirl merrily around the room.
'I think,' said Ojo, almost ready to cry through grief over Unc Nunkie's sad fate, 'it must all be my fault, in some way. I'm called Ojo the Unlucky, you know.'
'That's nonsense, kiddie,' retorted the Patchwork Girl cheerfully. 'No one can be unlucky who has the intelligence to direct his own actions. The unlucky ones are those who beg for a chance to think, like poor Dr. Pipt here. What's the row about, anyway, Mr. Magic-maker?'
'The Liquid of Petrifaction has accidentally fallen upon my dear wife and Unc Nunkie and turned them into marble,' he sadly replied.
'Well, why don't you sprinkle some of that powder on them and bring them to life again?' asked the Patchwork Girl.
The Magician gave a jump.
'Why, I hadn't thought of that!' he joyfully cried, and grabbed up the golden bottle, with which he ran to Margolotte.
Said the Patchwork Girl:
'Higgledy, piggledy, dee – What fools magicians be! His head's so thick He can't think quick, So he takes advice from me.'
Standing upon the bench, for he was so crooked he could not reach the top of his wife's head in any other way, Dr. Pipt began shaking the bottle. But not a grain of powder came out. He pulled off the cover, glanced within, and then threw the bottle from him with a wail of despair.
'Gone – gone! Every bit gone,' he cried. 'Wasted on that miserable phonograph when it might have saved my dear wife!'
Then the Magician bowed his head on his crooked arms and began to cry.
Ojo was sorry for him. He went up to the sorrowful man and said softly:
'You can make more Powder of Life, Dr. Pipt.'
'Yes; but it will take me six years – six long, weary years of stirring four kettles with both feet and both hands,' was the agonized reply. 'Six years! while poor Margolotte stands watching me as a marble image.'
'Can't anything else be done?' asked the Patchwork Girl.
The Magician shook his head. Then he seemed to remember something and looked up.
'There is one other compound that would destroy the magic spell of the Liquid of Petrifaction and restore my wife and Unc Nunkie to life,' said he. 'It may be hard to find the things I need to make this magic compound, but if they were found I could do in an instant what will otherwise take six long, weary years of stirring kettles with both hands and both feet.'
'All right; let's find the things, then,' suggested the Patchwork Girl. 'That seems a lot more sensible than those stirring times with the kettles.'
'That's the idea, Scraps,' said the Glass Cat, approvingly. 'I'm glad to find you have decent brains. Mine are exceptionally good. You can see 'em work; they're pink.'
'Scraps?' repeated the girl. 'Did you call me 'Scraps'? Is that my name?'
'I – I believe my poor wife had intended to name you 'Angeline,'' said the Magician.
'But I like 'Scraps' best,' she replied with a laugh. 'It fits me better, for my patchwork is all scraps, and nothing else. Thank you for naming me, Miss Cat. Have you any name of your own?'
'I have a foolish name that Margolotte once gave me, but which is quite undignified for one of my importance,' answered the cat. 'She called me 'Bungle.''
'Yes,' sighed the Magician; 'you were a sad bungle, taken all in all. I was wrong to make you as I did, for a more useless, conceited and brittle thing never before existed.'
'I'm not so brittle as you think,' retorted the cat. 'I've been alive a good many years, for Dr. Pipt experimented on me with the first magic Powder of Life he ever made, and so far I've never broken or cracked or chipped any part of me.'
'You seem to have a chip on your shoulder,' laughed the Patchwork Girl, and the cat went to the mirror to see.
'Tell me,' pleaded Ojo, speaking to the Crooked Magician, 'what must we find to make the compound that will save Unc Nunkie?'
