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"You can slide, can't you?" asked the Stove.
"Yes, both ways. Standing up and sitting down."
"Well, my patent steam skates, operated by gas, will attend to all the rest if you will only stand up straight,"
returned the Stove, and the sleigh dropped lightly down to the earth, and the two crusaders against Jack Frost alighted.
"Isn't it beautiful here?" said Jimmieboy, as he looked about him and saw superb tall trees, their leaves white and glistening in the moonlight, bound in an icy covering that kept them always as he saw them then. "And look at the flowers," he added, joyously, as he caught sight of a bed of rose-bushes, only the flowers were lustrous as silver and of the same dazzling whiteness.
"Yes," said the Gas Stove, sadly. "Every time Jack Frost withers a flower or a plant he brings it here, and it remains forever as you see them now; he has had the choice of the most beautiful things in the world. But come, we must hurry. Put on these skates."
Jimmieboy did as he was told, and then the Stove lit a row of small jets of gas along the steel runners of the skates, and they grew warm to Jimmieboy's feet, and in a moment little puffs of steam issued forth from them, and Jimmieboy began to move, slowly at first, and then more and more quickly, until he was racing at breakneck speed.
"Hi, Stovey!" he cried, very much alarmed to find himself speeding off through this strange country all alone. "Hurry up and catch me, or I'll be out of sight."
"Keep on," hallooed the Stove in return. "Don't bother about me. I've got four feet to your two, and I can go twice as fast as you do. Keep on straight ahead, and I'll be up with you in a minute just as soon as I can get the ammunition and my hose out."
"I wonder what he's going to do with the hose?" Jimmieboy asked himself. The Stove was too far behind him for the little skater to ask him.
"Halt!" cried a voice in front of Jimmieboy.
"I can't," gasped the little fellow, very much frightened, for as he gazed through the darkness to see who it was that addressed him, he perceived a huge snow man standing directly in his path.
"You must," cried the Snow Man, opening his mouth and breathing forth an icy blast that nearly froze the water in Jimmieboy's eyes. "You shall!" he added, opening his arms wide, so that before he knew it Jimmieboy was precipitated into them.
"See?" said the Snow Man. "I can compel y "
The Snow Man never got any further with this remark, for in a moment Jimmieboy passed straight through him. The heat of Jimmieboy's clothes had melted a hole through the Snow Man, and as the small skater turned to look at his adversary he saw him standing there, his head, his sides, and legs still intact, but from his waist down all the middle part of him had disappeared.
"Dear me! How sad," Jimmieboy said.
"Not at all," responded a voice beside him. "It serves him right; he's the meanest Snow Man that ever lived. If you hadn't melted him he'd have turned himself into an avalanche, and then you'd have been buried so deep in snow and ice you'd never have got out."
"Who are you?" queried Jimmieboy, with a startled glance in the direction whence the voice seemed to come.
"Only what you hear," replied the voice. "I am a voice. Jack Frost froze the rest of me and carted it away, and left me here for the rest of my life."
"What were you?"
"I cannot remember," said the voice. "I may have been anything you can think of. You could stand there and call me all the names you chose, and I couldn't deny that I was any of them.
once; that Jack Frost came along and caught me and added me to his collection of curiosities, where I have been ever since. They call me the invisible chatter-box, and tell visitors that I escaped from the National Vocabulary at Washington."
"I am very sorry for you," said Jimmieboy, sympathetically.
"You needn't be," said the voice. "I'm happy! I'm the only curiosity here that can be impudent to King Jack. I can say what I please, you know, and there's no way of punishing me; I'm like a newspaper in that respect. I can go into any home, high or low, say what I please, and there you are. Nobody can hurt me at all. Oh, it's just immense. I play all sorts of tricks on Jack, too. I get right up in front of his mouth and talk ridiculous nonsense, and people think he says it. Why, only the other night a Snow Man I don't like went in to see Jack, and Jack liked him tremendously, too, and was really glad to see him; but before the King had a chance to say a word I hallooed out: 'Get out of here, you donkey. Go make snow-balls of your head and throw them at yourself;' and the Snow Man thought Jack said it, and, do you know, he went outside and did it. He's been laid up ever since."