"Why don't you have yourself stuffed?" asked the Scarecrow, sitting down in the hammock beside Betsy Bobbin. "Then you would lose this frightful appetite and never be hungry at all. Mighty convenient, being stuffed, old boy. Saves no end of bother and expense." The Scarecrow spoke from experience, for he was himself a stuffed person, having been made by a Munchkin farmer and stuck on a pole to scare away the crows. He had been lifted down and brought to the Emerald City by Dorothy, on her first adventure, and since then has been restuffed and laundered many times. Of all Ozma's advisers, he is the wittiest and most lovable. "Have yourself stuffed," he advised cheerfully, "and use straw like I do." "He stuffs himself from morning till night," snickered Scraps turning a handspring. "If he were not so ugly--so yellow and so big I'd say he warn't a tiger, but a greedy weedy--" "Scraps!" Ozma raised her scepter warningly, and the Patchwork Girl dove into a button bush. But almost immediately her mischievous face reappeared. "Pig!" shouted Scraps defiantly, and looked so funny, peering out of the button bush, that even the Hungry Tiger had to grin. "I say, though, why _don't_ you have yourself stuffed?" asked the little Wizard of Oz, who had just come up. "I've been experimenting with some new wishing powders and might easily wish you out of your jacket and stuff you with sawdust." "Sawdust!" coughed the Hungry Tiger, sitting up and lashing his tail at the very thought of such a thing, "I should say not. I prefer my own stuffing, thank you." "So do I," said Betsy, running over to give him a little hug. "You're so soft and comfortable to ride this way." "But sawdust is very serviceable," urged the Wizard, who was anxious to try his new powders, "and I could stuff you in an hour." The Wizard, by the way, is a mortal like Dorothy and Betsy. Long ago he had been engaged by a circus in Omaha to make balloon flights. But one afternoon, his balloon becoming unmanageable, had flown off--up and away and never stopped till it dropped down in Oz. It was the Wizard who had built the Emerald City and for many years he practiced the trick magic he had learned in the circus. But later, Glinda the good Sorceress of the South, had taught him real magic and he is now one of the most accomplished magicians in all fairy history. "Better let me stuff you," repeated the Wizard coaxingly. "No! No! No!" roared the Hungry Tiger, becoming really alarmed at the little man's persistence. "No, I tell you!" "Well," the Wizard rose regretfully and began to move off, "if you ever change your mind, let me have first chance, will you?" "I'm going to change my mind to-morrow." Sitting down stiffly on a bench opposite the hammock, Jack Pumpkinhead beamed upon the company. "It's almost too soft to use," mused Jack, touching the top of his pumpkin gently, "so, if you don't mind, I'll not talk any more."