Tititi-Hoochoo has forbidden us to throw even rubbish into the Tube." "Pooh! what do I care for the Jinjin ?" asked Ruggedo scornfully.

"He never leaves his own kingdom, which is on the other side of the world." "True; but he might send some one through the Tube to punish you," suggested Kaliko.
"I'd like to see him do it! Who could conquer my thousands of nomes ?" "Why, they've been conquered before, if I remember aright," answered Kaliko with a grin.

"Once I saw you running from a little girl named Dorothy, and her friends, as if you were really afraid." "Well, I was afraid, that time," admitted the Nome King, with a deep sigh, "for Dorothy had a Yellow Hen that laid eggs!" The King shuddered as he said "eggs," and Kaliko also shuddered, and so did the Long-Eared Hearer; for eggs are the only things that the nomes greatly dread.

The reason for this is that eggs belong on the earth's surface, where birds and fowl of all sorts live, and there is something about a hen's egg, especially, that fills a nome with horror.

If by chance the inside of an egg touches one of these underground people, he withers up and blows away and that is the end of him--unless he manages quickly to speak a magical word which only a few of the nomes know.
Therefore Ruggedo and his followers had very good cause to shudder at the mere mention of eggs.
"But Dorothy," said the King, "is not with this band of invaders; nor is the Yellow Hen.