The Road to Oz / Путешествие в Страну Оз. Книга для чтения на английском языке

“Not that one!” she cried; “you’re going wrong[3 - you’re going wrong – (разг.) вы идете не туда].”

He stopped.

“I thought you said that other was the road to Butterfield,” said he, running his fingers through his shaggy whiskers in a puzzled way.

“So it is.”

“But I don’t want to go to Butterfield, miss.”

“You don’t?”

“Of course not. I wanted you to show me the road, so I shouldn’t go there by mistake.”

“Oh! Where DO you want to go, then?”

“I’m not particular[4 - I’m not particular – (уст.

) Я точно не знаю], miss.”

This answer astonished the little girl; and it made her provoked, too, to think she had taken all this trouble for nothing.

“There are a good many roads here,” observed the shaggy man, turning slowly around, like a human windmill. “Seems to me a person could go ’most anywhere, from this place.”

Dorothy turned around too, and gazed in surprise. There WERE a good many roads; more than she had ever seen before.

She tried to count them, knowing there ought to be five, but when she had counted seventeen she grew bewildered and stopped, for the roads were as many as the spokes of a wheel and ran in every direction from the place where they stood; so if she kept on counting she was likely to count some of the roads twice.

“Dear me!” she exclaimed. “There used to be only five roads, highway and all. And now – why, where’s the highway, Shaggy Man?”

“Can’t say, miss,” he responded, sitting down upon the ground as if tired with standing.

“Wasn’t it here a minute ago?”

“I thought so,” she answered, greatly perplexed. “And I saw the gopher holes, too, and the dead stump; but they’re not here now. These roads are all strange – and what a lot of them there are! Where do you suppose they all go to?”

“Roads,” observed the shaggy man, “don’t go anywhere. They stay in one place, so folks can walk on them.

”

He put his hand in his side-pocket and drew out an apple – quick, before Toto could bite him again. The little dog got his head out this time and said “Bow-wow!” so loudly that it made Dorothy jump.

“O, Toto!” she cried; “where did you come from?”

“I brought him along,” said the shaggy man.

“What for?” she asked.

“To guard these apples in my pocket, miss, so no one would steal them.