“Fine!” cried the old soldier, who was in excellent spirits himself. “And if you will just sew a button on this shirt I’ll be ready to start at once!” So while Grampa went on with the breakfast Mrs Sew-and-Sew, who was frightfully clever with her needle, sewed a button on the shirt. That was all Grampa needed to complete his outfit, so he hurried up stairs to waken the Prince, and at eight o’clock precisely the old soldier and Tatters issued forth from the palace gates. Grampa wore the red uniform of the Ragbad Guards, with its scarlet coat and checkered trousers and carried not only his knapsack, gun and sword, but his trusty drum as well. Prince Tatters, over his many colored rag suit, had flung the shaggy skin of a thread bear, and with the big umbrella grasped firmly in one hand and a box of lunch in the other, presented so brave and determined an appearance that the twenty-seven good men of Ragbad, drawn up to bid them farewell, burst into loud cheers. The children waved their hats and handkerchiefs and strewed the path of the two heroes with the bunches of posies and ragweed they had risen at dawn to gather. Mrs Sew-and-Sew and the King stood on the balcony waving their arms—she waving both hers and his—for poor Fumbo, with his dough head, had no way of knowing what the excitement was all about and stood there without so much as blinking a prune. “Good-bye!” choked Mrs Sew-and-Sew, steadying Fumbo with one hand and fluttering her apron with the other. “Don’t forget your father’s head!” “Good-bye!” shouted Pudge, leaning far out of his window in the tower to wave his red night cap. Pudge never rose till ten. Grampa touched his cap, Prince Tatters waved his umbrella, and having taken the patched flag of Ragbad from Scroggles, who had accompanied them thus far, they wheeled sharply to the left and marched down the broad red highway that led straight out into other and dangerous lands of Oz! CHAPTER 3 The Blue Forest of Oz “Grampa,” said Prince Tatters, after the two adventurers had marched along for a time in silence, “Pudge did not tell us where to look for my father’s head, nor where to find the Princess and the fortune.” “Trust a wise man for that,” replied the old soldier, striking a match on his game leg and lighting his pipe. “Then where are we going Grampa?” asked the Prince, shifting his umbrella to his other arm and adjusting his stride to that of the old soldier.