"Dear me!" exclaimed Dorothy, interrupting the speech. "I've lost all
track of what you are saying."
"Don't let her begin over again, for goodness sake!" cried Aunt Em.
But the woman did not begin again. She did not even stop talking,
but went right on as she had begun, the words flowing from her mouth
in a stream.
"I'm quite sure that if we waited long enough and listened carefully,
some of these people might be able to tell us something, in time,"
said the Wizard.
"Let's don't wait," returned Dorothy. "I've heard of the Rigmaroles,
and wondered what they were like; but now I know, and I'm ready to
move on."
"So am I," declared Uncle Henry; "we're wasting time here."
"Why, we're all ready to go," said the Shaggy Man, putting his fingers
to his ears to shut out the monotonous babble of those around the wagon.
So the Wizard spoke to the Sawhorse, who trotted nimbly through the
village and soon gained the open country on the other side of it.
Dorothy looked back, as they rode away, and noticed that the woman
had not yet finished her speech but was talking as glibly as ever,
although no one was near to hear her.
"If those people wrote books," Omby Amby remarked with a smile, "it
would take a whole library to say the cow jumped over the moon."
"Perhaps some of 'em do write books," asserted the little Wizard.
"I've read a few rigmaroles that might have come from this very town."
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