"You've brought me good luck, Snip," smiled the old gentleman. "I've tried a hundred times to escape from the Blanks, but never could get through that gate." "Well, I am glad I could help you, for you helped me," said Snip. "Now that you have escaped, where will you go? Do you remember where you lived before?" "I remember nothing," acknowledged the tailor sorrowfully, "so I'm going with you and after we find this good goose you speak of and the King, I'll just look around for another shop. A tailor has no cause to worry, and I've all my tools right with me." He chuckled, jingling his pockets cheerfully. Snip had to smile himself, for Tora certainly did look like a walking work-shop. Around his neck were three long tape measures. Through tapes in his vest there hung a dozen pairs of scissors and shears of all sizes. Fastened to his coat was a huge pin cushion and both lapels were stuck full of needles. As for his pockets, they simply bulged with spools of silk, beeswax and thread. Snip thought he had never seen a more interesting traveller and, feeling happier than he had since he left Kimbaloo, and quite hopeful of finding Pajuka, he began to examine the surrounding country. The Fare-well had spilled them into a large field of wheat and, from several purple barns in the distance, Snip knew they were still in the land of the Gillikens. "You'll have to be guide, Snip," sighed the tailor, gazing around with a bewildered expression. "I've lived so long with the Blanks that I know nothing of these parts at all. As for the Emerald City, I can't remember even hearing of it." "Well, I've never been there," admitted Snip, "but I know it is in the very center of Oz and we were going south when Mombi threw me down the well. So if we can find out which direction is south we ought to reach the Emerald City by night time. Which way do _you_ think it is?" The tailor squinted doubtfully up at the sun and, after a few more useless guesses, they determined to take a chance and started diagonally across the field. "I wonder what shape Mombi did turn the King into," muttered Snip, as they hurried along through the wheat. "And I wonder whether Ozma can change Pajuka back to his own self again. He's so tired of being a goose!" "It must be pretty tiresome," observed Tora, pushing his specs up on his forehead, "though no worse than tailoring from morning till night for a city full of invisible and ungrateful rascals. Not that I mind the tailoring," he explained hastily, looking down sideways at Snip. "I love that, and say, I'd like to make you a little suit sometime when I've set up my shop. No, it wasn't the tailoring, but the imprisonment that I minded." "Do you 'spose they've missed you yet? What will they do when they find you're gone?" chuckled the little button boy. He looked up expectantly, but the old man was staring thoughtfully over an olive tree and did not seem to hear Snip's question.