as a mat-ter of fact the Wheel-ers are harm-less e-nough to an-y one
that dares to fight them. They might try to hurt a lit-tle girl like
you, per-haps, be-cause they are ver-y mis-chiev-ous. But if I had a
club they would run a-way as soon as they saw me."

"Haven't you a club?" asked Dorothy.

"No," said Tiktok.

"And you won't find such a thing among these rocks, either," declared
the yellow hen.

"Then what shall we do?" asked the girl.

"Wind up my think-works tight-ly, and I will try to think of some
oth-er plan," said Tiktok.

So Dorothy rewound his thought machinery, and while he was thinking
she decided to eat her dinner. Billina was already pecking away at
the cracks in the rocks, to find something to eat, so Dorothy sat down
and opened her tin dinner-pail.

In the cover she found a small tank that was full of very nice
lemonade. It was covered by a cup, which might also, when removed, be
used to drink the lemonade from. Within the pail were three slices of
turkey, two slices of cold tongue, some lobster salad, four slices of
bread and butter, a small custard pie, an orange and nine large
strawberries, and some nuts and raisins. Singularly enough, the nuts
in this dinner-pail grew already cracked, so that Dorothy had no
trouble in picking out their meats to eat.