buzzing and buzzing their bee humpty dumpty song.

117

“Have you fastened names on them?” asked the Potato Face.

“These three on my thumb, these three special blue-violet bees, I put their names on silk white ribbons and tied the ribbons to their knees. This is Egypt—she has inkwells in her ears. This is Jesse James—he puts postage stamps on his nose. This is Spanish Onions—she likes pearl-color handkerchiefs around her yellow neck.”

“Bees belong in bee-bags, but these are different,” the old man murmured.

“Runaway bees, these are,” Dippy the Wisp went on. “They buzz away, they come buzzing 118back, buzzing home, buzzing secrets, syllables, snitches.

118

“To-day Egypt came buzzing home with her inkwells in her ears. And Egypt buzzed, ‘I flew and flew and I buzzed and buzzed far, far away, till I came where I met the Queen of the Cracked Heads with her head all cracked. And she took me by the foot and took me to the palace of the Cracked Heads with their heads all cracked.

“‘The palace was full of goats walking up and down the stairs, sliding on the banisters eating bingety bing clocks. Before he bites the clock and chews and swallows and eats the bingety bing clock, I noticed, each goat winds up the clock and fixes it to go off bling bling bingety bing, after he eats it down. I noticed that. And the fat, fat, puffy goats, the fat, fat, waddly goats, had extra clocks hung on their horns—and the clocks, tired of waiting, spoke to each other in the bingety bing clock talk. I noticed that too.

119

She was sitting on a ladder feeding baby clocks to the baby alligators

121“‘I stayed all morning and I saw them feed the big goats big hunks and the little goats little hunks and the big clocks big bings and the little clocks little bings. At last in the afternoon, the queen of the Cracked Heads came with her cracked head to say good-by to me. She was sitting on a ladder feeding baby clocks to baby alligators, winding the clocks and fixing the bingety bings, so after the baby alligators swallowed the clocks, I heard them singing bling bling bingety bing.

121

“‘And the Queen was reading the alphabet to the littlest of the baby alligators—and they were saying the 

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