L Frank Baum

The Road to Oz L Frank Baum

THE seventh road was a good road, and curved this way and that-winding through greenmeadows and fields covered with daisies and buttercups and past groups of shady trees. There wereno houses of any sort to be seen, and for some distance they met with no living creature at all. Dorothy began to fear they were getting a good way from the farm-house, since here everything wasstrange to her; but it would do no good at all to go back where the other roads all met, because thenext one they chose might lead her just as far from home. She kept on beside the shaggy man, who whistled cheerful tunes to beguile the journey, until byand-by they followed a turn in the road and saw before them a big chestnut tree making a shady spotover the highway. In the shade sat a little boy dressed in sailor clothes, who was digging a hole in theearth with a bit of wood. He must have been digging some time, because the hole was already bigenough to drop a foot-ball into. Dorothy and Toto and the shaggy man came to a halt before the little boy, who kept on digging ina sober and persistent fashion."Who are you?" asked the girl. He looked up at her calmly. His face was round and chubby and his eyes were big, blue, andearnest."I'm Button-Bright," said he."But what's you real name?" she inquired."Button-Bright.""That isn't a really-truly name!" she exclaimed."Isn't it?" he asked, still digging.