Fantasy fiction; Oz (Imaginary place) -- Juvenile fiction
Randy considered the journey through the Box Wood one of their gayest
and most entertaining adventures. The woodmen, in their brightly
decorated boxes, shuffled cheerfully along beside them, stopping now
and then to point with pride to their square box-like dwellings set at
regular intervals under the spreading boxwood trees. The whole forest
was covered by an enormous wooden box that shut out the sky and gave
everything an artificial and unreal look. It was in one side of this
monster box that Thun had burned the hole to admit them. Randy and
Planetty, riding sociably together on Kabumpo's back, picked boxes
from branches of all the trees they could reach, and it was such fun
and so exciting they paid scarcely any attention to the remarks of
Chillywalla. Even the Elegant Elephant snapped off a box or two and
handed them back to his royal riders.
"Oh, look!" exulted Randy, opening a bright blue cardboard box. "This
is just full of chocolate candy."
"Oh, throw that trash away," advised Chillywalla contemptuously.
"We think nothing of the stuff that grows inside, it's the boxes
themselves we are after."
"But this candy is good," objected Randy after sampling several pieces.
"And mind you, Kabumpo, Planetty has just picked a jewel box full of
real chains, rings and bracelets."
"Oh, they are netiful, netiful," crooned the Princess of Anuther
Planet, hugging the velvet jewel box to her breast.
"Keep them if you wish," sniffed Chillywalla, "but they're just rubbish
to us. When we pick boxes we toss the contents away."
"Now, that's plain foolishness," snorted Kabumpo, aghast at such a
waste, as Randy picked a pencil box full of neatly sharpened pencils
and Planetty a tidy sewing kit fitted out with scissors, needles and
spools of thread. The thimble was not quite ripe, but as Planetty had
never stitched a stitch in her royal life, she did not notice nor care
about that. Indeed, before they came to the other side of the Box
Wood, she and Randy were sitting in the midst of a high heap of their
treasures, and Kabumpo looked as if he were making a lengthy safari,
loaded up and down for the journey.
Randy had stuffed most of the boxes into big net bags Kabumpo always
brought along for emergencies, and these he tied to the Elegant
Elephant's harness. There were bread boxes packed with tiny loaves
and biscuits, cake boxes stuffed with sugar buns and cookies, stamp
boxes, flower boxes, glove boxes, coat and suit boxes. Last of all,
Randy picked a Band Box and it played such gay tunes when he lifted
the lid, Planetty clapped her silver hands, and even Kabumpo began to
hum under his breath. Traveling through the Box Wood with kind-hearted
Chillywalla was more like a surprise party than anything else. To
Planetty it was all so delightful, she began to wonder how she had ever
been satisfied with her life on Anuther Planet.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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