She spread the feast upon the rock beside her and began her dinner,
first offering some of it to Tiktok, who declined because, as he said,
he was merely a machine. Afterward she offered to share with Billina,
but the hen murmured something about "dead things" and said she
preferred her bugs and ants.

"Do the lunch-box trees and the dinner-pail trees belong to the
Wheelers?" the child asked Tiktok, while engaged in eating her meal.

"Of course not," he answered. "They be-long to the roy-al fam-il-y of
Ev, on-ly of course there is no roy-al fam-il-y just now be-cause King
Ev-ol-do jumped in-to the sea and his wife and ten chil-dren have been
trans-formed by the Nome King. So there is no one to rule the Land of
Ev, that I can think of. Per-haps it is for this rea-son that the
Wheel-ers claim the trees for their own, and pick the lunch-eons and
din-ners to eat them-selves. But they be-long to the King, and you will
find the roy-al "E" stamped up-on the bot-tom of ev-er-y din-ner pail."

Dorothy turned the pail over, and at once discovered the royal mark
upon it, as Tiktok had said.

"Are the Wheelers the only folks living in the Land of Ev?" enquired
the girl.

"No; they on-ly in-hab-it a small por-tion of it just back of the
woods," replied the machine. "But they have al-ways been
mis-chiev-ous and im-per-ti-nent, and my old mas-ter, King Ev-ol-do,
used to car-ry a whip with him, when he walked out, to keep the
crea-tures in or-der. When I was first made the Wheel-ers tried to