Bangs John Kendrick - Half-Hours with Jimmieboy стр 28.

"No," answered the Stove. "Gas is expensive these days. You can turn yourself out right away. Have you fed the horses?"

"Yes, sir," said the boy. "They've each had four thousand feet by the meter for supper."

"Fuel or illuminating?" queried the Stove.

"Illuminating," replied the boy.

"Good," said the Stove. "That ought to make them bright. Good-by. Get up!"

With this the horses made a spring forward fiery steeds in very truth, their outlines in jets, each burning a small flame, standing out like lines of stars in the sky.

"This is pretty fine, eh?" said the Gas Stove, with a smile, which, had any one looked, must have been visible for miles, so light and cheerful was it.

"Lovely!" cried Jimmieboy, almost gasping in ecstasy. "I'm just as warm and comfortable as can be. I didn't know you had a team like this."

"Ah, my boy," returned the Stove, "there's lots you don't know. For instance:

"No, I don't," said Jimmieboy. "But I should like to very much."

"So should I," said the Stove. "We're very much alike in a great many respects, and particularly in those in which we resemble each other."

The truth of this was so evident that Jimmieboy could think of nothing to say in answer to it, so he merely observed: "I'm awful hungry."

This was a favorite remark of his, particularly between meals.

"So am I," said the Stove. "Let's see what we've got here. Just hold the reins while I dive down into the lunch basket."

Jimmieboy took the reins with some fear at first, but when he saw that they were

high up in the air where there was really nothing but a star or two to run into, and realized that even they were millions of miles away, he soon got used to it, and was sorry when the Stove resumed control.

"There, Jimmieboy," said the Stove, as he drew his hand out of the basket. "There's a nice hot ginger-snap for you. I think I'll take a snack of this fuel gas myself."

"You don't eat gas, do you?" asked the small passenger.

"I guess I do," ejaculated the Stove, with a smack of his lips. "As our Gas Poet Laureate said:

"Do you chew it?" asked Jimmieboy.

"No, indeed. We take it in through a pipe. It isn't like soup or meat, though I sometimes think if people could take soup out of a pipe instead of from a spoon they'd look handsomer while they were eating. But the great thing about it is it's always ready, and if it comes cold, all you have to do is to touch a match to it, and it gets as hot as you could want."

"I should think you'd get tired of it," said Jimmieboy.

"Not at all. There's a great variety in gases. There's fuel gas, illuminating gas, laughing gas, attagas "

"What's that last?" queried Jimmieboy.

"Attagas? Why, when we want a game dinner, we have attagas. If you will look it up in the dictionary you will find that it's a sort of partridge. It's mighty good, too, with a sauce of stewed gasberries, and a mug or two of gasparillo to wash it down."

Here Jimmieboy smacked his lips. Gasparillo truly sounded as if it might be very delightful, though I don't myself believe it is any less bitter to the taste than some other barks of trees, such as quinine, for instance.

"Howdy do?" said the Stove, with a familiar nod to the east of them.

"Howdy do!" replied Jimmieboy.

"I wasn't speaking to you," said the Stove, with a laugh. "I was only nodding to an old friend of mine; he's got a fine place up in the sky there. His name is Sirius. They call him the dog-star, and all he has to do is twinkle. You can't see him all the time from your house, but when you get up as high as this he stands right out and twinkles at you. Pretty good fellow, Sirius is. I might have had his place, but somehow or other I prefer to work in-doors and rest nights. Sirius is out all the time, and has to keep awake all night. But we've got to get down to the earth again. Here's where we take to the skates."

Jimmieboy looked over the edge of the sleigh as the horses turned in response to a movement of the reins, and started down to earth. He saw a great white river below him, flowing silently along a narrow winding channel, everything on the border of which seemed bathed in silver except the middle of the river itself, a strip of forty or fifty feet in width, which was not frozen over.

"That's Frostland," whispered the Gas Stove. "We can't get over to the other side with this team because they are very skittish, and if the sleigh were overturned and our ammunition lost we should be lost ourselves. We've got to land directly below where we are now, skate to the edge of the ice on this bank, row over to the other, and then skate again directly to the palace. We mustn't let anybody know who we really are, either, or we may have trouble, and we want to avoid that; for you know, Jimmieboy,