"Farmer,.Phillip.Jose.-.A.Barnstormer.In.Oz" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farmer Phillip Jose)

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Philip Jos6 Farmer

"Idon't have many enemies, but they're very powerful," she said. "And very clever."

"You mean that they might import me from Earth so that I could assassinate you," he said. He laughed. Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown... no... paranoiac is the mind of the ruler.

She laughed, too, looking so beautiful that his chest ached. God, what an enchantress! Even if she was only four feet four inches tall.

"It is ridiculous, isn't it?" she said.

He held out to her the steel key and gold chain which he had removed from his leather jacket that morning.

"My mother gave me this to wear as a good-luck charm."

Glinda took it and turned it over and over. When she handed it back to him, she said, ' 'It looks just like the key she had when she came here."

"It's the same one. I don't know if the house in which she rode the tornado into this world is still standing. But if it is, this key would unlock the front door."

"It's a state monument, and many Munchkins go to see it every year."

"I'd like to see it, too."

"You may be able to. Some day."

The servant asked softly if he was through' eating or if he wished more. He told her that he was full. She probably agreed with him, since he had put away three times the amount she would have. After the table was cleared, Stover asked Glinda if he could smoke.

"Not in my presence," she said, smiling to take the sting out.

Stover put the pipe and tobacco pouch back into his jacket pocket.

"Now," she said, "you have told Lamblo your story of just how you entered into our world. But I would like it from you."

He obeyed. When he was finished, she said, "Apparently, you have no idea at all of why this happened."

"No. Does Your Witchness?"

"Not at the moment. Tell me what happened to Dorothy after I sent her home. Tell me of yourself."

That was not easy to do. He had to stop often and explain just what his references were. However, she understood more

A BARNSTORMER IN OZ

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than he had thought she would, since Dorothy had explained so much to her. What a memory Glinda had! Tight as a banker's fist. She had apparently forgotten nothing his mother had told her.

Dorothy had been carried off in the farmhouse by a tornado, not a cyclone. Her uncle's farm had been a few miles out from Aberdeen, South Dakota, on that day of May 23, 1890.