[Illustration]

The curtains opened, and out stepped a man, also with a hat like a
saucer turned upside down, only it was made all of gold and had
precious stones in its rim. And his eyes were fiercer, his mustaches
longer than those of the other men. In fact, his mustaches reached
almost to his knees, and he kept pulling and tugging at them with
fingernails that were fully a foot long. My! if those fingernails ever
reached Marmaduke's eyes there wouldn't be much of them left. That's
what Marmaduke was thinking. And they were very much frightened--all
except Wienerwurst, who was smelling the funny slippers of the wild
strangers.

Choo Choo Choo (for that was their leader's name) stretched himself.
With his drooping sleeves and foot-long fingernails, he looked like
the bats that sail under the trees in the twilight and nest, so they
say, in people's hair. He gazed out over the tea-fields and saw not a
soul, for every mother's son and mother's daughter, too, was hiding
tight under the bushes, but a million little pigtails trembled in the
air.

"Whee!" shouted the great Choo Choo Choo;

And again,--

"Whee!"

And once more,--

"Whee!"