Jimmieboy said nothing to this. He was too much surprised to say anything – the idea of a gas-stove speaking to him was so absurd. He only gazed steadfastly at the extraordinary thing in the fire-place, and then let his head droop down on his arms as he lay on the floor, and in a moment would have been asleep had not the stove again sputtered.
"Hi! Jimmieboy!" it cried. "Don't go to sleep. I know where Jack Frost lives, and we'll get after him and punish him for what he did to little Russ."
"How?" asked Jimmieboy, crawling across the room on his hands and knees, and looking earnestly at this strange gas-stove.
"Never mind how," returned the Stove. "I'll tell you that later. The point is, will you go? If you will say the word I'll make all the arrangements, and we'll set off after everybody has gone to bed. It is a beautiful moonlight night. Everything is just right for a successful trip. There's enough snow on the ground for the sleigh to move, and the river's all frozen over except in the middle. We can skate as far as the ice goes, and then, if there is no boat, we can put on your papa's arctics, and walk across the water to the other side. From there it's only a forty-minute skate to Jack's home. He'll come in about twelve o'clock, and we'll have him just where we want him. What do you say?"
"I'll be in bed by the time you want to start," said Jimmieboy. "I'd like to do it very much, but I don't know how to dress myself, and – "
"Never mind that," returned the Gas Stove. "Go as you are."
"In my night-gown? On a cold night like this?" queried the little fellow, more than ever astonished at the Gas Stove's peculiarities.
"Why, certainly. I'll see that you are kept warm," returned the stove. "I've got warmth enough for twenty-six as it is, and if there's only two of us – why, you see how it'll be. It'll be too warm for two of us."
"That's so," said Jimmieboy. "I never thought of it that way. I might sit on your lap if I couldn't keep warm any other way, eh?"
"I've got a better way than that," said the Stove, dancing a little jig on the tiles. "I'll get you a pair of gas gloves, some gas ear-tabs, a patent nose furnace, an overcoat lined with gas-jets that can be lit so as to keep you warm without burning you, and leggings, shoes, hats, and everything you need to make you feel as happy and warm as a poached egg on toast."
"That'll be splendid," said Jimmieboy. "I'll go, and we'll fix Jack so that he won't bite any of our people any more, eh?"
"Yes," said the Gas Stove, delighted at the prospect.
"Shall we muzzle him?" asked Jimmieboy. But the Gas Stove only winked, for just then mamma came up stairs from dinner, and as it was Jimmieboy's nurse's night out, his mamma undressed the little fellow, and put him in his crib, where he shortly dropped off to sleep.
In a little while everybody in the house had gone to bed, and when the last light had been extinguished the door of the room in which Jimmieboy slept was slowly opened, and the Gas Stove, all his lights turned down so that nobody could see him in the darkness, tip-toed in, and climbing upon the side of Jimmieboy's crib tapped him lightly on the shoulder.
"All ready?" he said, in a low whisper.
"Yes," answered Jimmieboy, softly, as he arose and got down on the floor. "How do we go? Down the stairs?"
"No," replied the Gas Stove. "We'll take the toy balloon up the chimney."
Which they at once proceeded to do.
XIV.
IN WHICH JIMMIEBOY AND THE GAS STOVE MAKE A START
"Now jump into the sleigh just as quickly as you can, Jimmieboy," said the Stove, as they issued forth into the cold night air. "Put on that fur cap and the overcoat, shoes, and gloves, and I'll light 'em up."
"They won't burn, for sure?" queried Jimmieboy, nervously, for the idea of wearing clothes heated by gas was a little bit terrifying.
"Not a bit," said the Stove in reply. "I wouldn't give 'em to you if they would. Thanks," he added, turning and throwing a ten-cent piece to a gas boy, who handed him the reins by which the horses were controlled. "We'll be back about sunrise."
"Very well," said the boy. "Do you want me turned on all night, sir?"
"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:
"You don't know why a fire will burnOn hot days merrily;And when the cold days come, will turnAs cold as I-C-E!"You don't know why the puppies bark,Or why snap-turtles snap;Or why a horse runs round the park,Because you say, 'git-ap.'"You don't know why a peach has fuzzUpon its pinky cheek;Or what the poor Dumb-Crambo doesWhen he desires to speak."Do you?"
"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:
"Oh, keroseneIs good, I ween,And so is apple sass;But bring for me,Oh, chickadee,A bowl of fuel gas!"Some persons likeThe red beefstike,The cow just dotes on grass —But to my mindNo one can findMore toothsome things than gas."And so I say,Bring me no hay;No roasted deep-sea bass.Bring me no pease,Or fricassees,If, haply, you have gas.""It's easy to eat, too," added the Stove. "In fact, I heard your papa say we consumed too much of it one day when he'd got his bill from the gas butcher."
"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,
"The man who gets along withoutA care or bit of strife,Is certain sure, beyond all doubt,To lead a happy life.""But I can't skate," said Jimmieboy.
"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.
"Sometimes I think I may have beenA piece of apple pie;Perhaps a great and haughty queen,Perhaps a gaily dressed marine,In former days was I."I may have been a calendar,To tell some man the date;I may have been a railway car,A rocket or a shooting star,Or e'en a roller skate."I may have been a jar of jam,Perhaps a watch and chain;I may have been a boy named Sam,An oyster or a toothsome clam,Perhaps a weather vane."I may have been a pot of ink,A sloop or schooner yacht;I may have been the missing link,But what I was I cannot think —For I have quite forgot."All I know is that I was something 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."
"I think that was a very mean thing to do," said Jimmieboy.
"I'd agree with you if I had any conscience, but alas! they've deprived me of that too," sighed the voice. "But look out," it added, hastily. "Throw yourself into that snow-bank or you'll fall into the river."
Without waiting to think why, Jimmieboy obeyed the voice and threw himself headlong into a huge snow bank at his side, and glanced anxiously about him.
He was indeed, as the voice had said, on the very edge of the ice, and another yard's advance would have landed him head over heels in the rushing water.
"That would have been awful, wouldn't it?" he said to the Stove, as his little friend came up.
"Yes, it would," returned the Stove. "It would have put out the lights in your clothes, and that would have been very awful, for I find we have come away without any matches. Jump into the boat, now, and row as straight for the other side as you can."
Jimmieboy looked about him for a boat, but couldn't see one.
"There is no boat," he said.
"Yes, there is – jump!" cried the Stove.
And Jimmieboy jumped, and, strange to relate, found himself in an instant seated amidships in an exquisitely light row-boat made entirely of ice.
"Row fast, now," said the Stove. "If you don't the boat will melt before we can get across."
XV.
IN THE HEART OF FROSTLAND
"We're afloat!We're afloat!In our trim ice-boat;And we row —Yeave ho!"I guess I won't sing any more," said the Gas Stove. "It's a hard song to sing, that is, particularly when you've never heard it before, and can't think of another rhyme for boat."
"That's easy enough to find," returned Jimmieboy, pulling at the oars. "Coat rhymes with boat, and so do note and moat and goat and – "
"Very true," assented the Stove, "but it wouldn't do to use coat because we take our coats off when we row. Note is good enough but you don't have time to write one when you are singing a sea-song. Moat isn't any good, because nobody'd know whether you meant the moat of a castle, a sun-moat, or the one in your eye. As for goats, goats don't go well in poetry. So I guess it's just as well to stop singing right here."
"How fast we go!" said Jimmieboy.
"What did you expect?" asked the Stove. "The bottom of this boat is as slippery as can be, and, of course, going up the river against the current we get over the water faster than if we were going the other way because we – er – because we – well because we do."
"Seems to me," said Jimmieboy, "I'd better turn out some of the gas in my coat. I'm melting right through the seat here."
"So am I," returned the Stove, with an anxious glance at the icy craft. "It won't be more than a minute before I melt my end of the boat all to pieces. I'm afraid we'll have to take to our arctics after all. I brought a pair of your father's along, and it's a good thing for us that he has big feet, for you'll have to get in one and I in the other."
Just then the stern of the boat melted away, and the Stove, springing up from his seat and throwing himself into one of the arctics, with his ammunition and rubber hose, floated off. Jimmieboy had barely time to get into the other arctic when his end of the ice-boat also gave way, and a cross-current in the stream catching the arctic whirled it about and carried it and its little passenger far away from the Stove who shortly disappeared around a turn in the river, so that Jimmieboy was left entirely alone in utter ignorance as to where he really was or what he should do next. Generally Jimmieboy was a very brave little boy, but he found his present circumstances rather trying. To be floating down a strange river in a large overshoe, with absolutely no knowledge of the way home, and a very dim notion only as to how he had managed to get where he was, was terrifying, and when he realized his position, great tears fell from Jimmieboy's eyes, freezing into little pearls of ice before they landed in the bottom of the golosh, where they piled up so rapidly that the strange craft sank further and further into the water and would certainty have sunk with their weight had not the voice Jimmieboy had encountered a little while before come to his rescue.
"Golosh, ahoy!" cried the voice. "Captain! Captain! Lean over the side and cry in the river or you'll sink your boat."
The sound of the voice was a great relief to the little sailor who at once tried to obey the order he had received but found it unnecessary since his tears immediately dried up.
"Come out here in the boat with me!" cried Jimmieboy. "I'm awful lonesome and I don't know what to do."
"Then there is only one thing you can do," said the voice from a point directly over the buckle of the arctic. "And that is to sit still and let time show you. It's a great thing, Jimmieboy, when you don't know what to do and can't find any one to tell you, to sit down and do nothing, because if you did something you'd be likely to find out afterwards that it was the wrong thing. When I was young, in the days when I was what I used to be, I once read a poem that has lingered with me ever since. It was called 'Wait and See' and this is the way it went:
"When you are puzzled what to do,And no one's nigh to help you out;You'll find it for the best that youShould wait until Time gives the clew.And then your business go about —Of this there is no doubt."Just see the cow! She never knowsWhat's going to happen next, so sheContented 'mongst the daises goes,In clover from her head to toes,From care and trouble ever free —She simply waits, you see!"The horse, unlike the cow, in fearJumps to and fro at maddest rate,Tears down the street, doth snort and rear,And knocks the wagon out of gear —And just because he does not wait,His woes accumulate."D. Crockett, famous in the past,The same sage thought hath briefly wedTo words that must forever last,Wherever haply they be cast:'Be sure you're right, then go ahead,'"That's what D. Crockett said."Lots in that. If you don't know what to do," continued the voice, "don't do it."
"I won't," said Jimmieboy. "But do you know where we are?"
"Yes," said the voice. "I am here and you are there, and I think if we stay just as we are forever there is not likely to be any change, so why repine? We are happy."
Just then the golosh passed into a huge cavern, whose sides glistened like silver, and from the roof of which hung millions of beautiful and at times fantastically shaped icicles.
"This," said the voice, "is the gateway to the Kingdom of Frostland. At the far end you will see a troop of ice soldiers standing guard. I doubt very much if you can get by them, unless you have retained a great deal of that heat you had. How is it? Are you still lit?"
"I am," said Jimmieboy. "Just put your hand on my chest and see how hot it is."
"Can't do it," returned the voice, "for two reasons. First, I haven't a hand to do it with, and secondly, if I had, I couldn't see with it. People don't see with their hands any more than they sing with their toes; but say, Jimmieboy, wouldn't it be funny if we could do all those things – eh? What a fine poem this would be if it were only sensible:
"A singular song having greeted my toes,I stared till I weakened the sight of my noseTo see what it was, and observed a sweet voiceCome forth from the ears of Lucinda, so choice."I cast a cough-drop in the lovely one's eyes,Who opened her hands in a tone of surprise,And remarked, in a way that startled my wife,'I never was treated so ill in my life.'"Then tears in a torrent coursed over her arms,And the blush on her teeth much heightened her charms.As, tossing the cough-drop straight back, with a sneeze,She smashed the green goggles I wear on my knees."Jimmieboy laughed so long and so loudly at this poetical effusion that he attracted the attention of the guards, who immediately loaded their guns and began to pepper the invaders with snow-balls.
"Throw yourself down on your stomach in the toe of the golosh," whispered the voice, "and they'll never know you are there. Keep perfectly quiet, and when any questions are asked, even if you are discovered, let me answer them. I can disguise myself so that they won't recognize me, and they'll think I'm your voice. In this way I think I can get you through in safety."
So Jimmieboy threw himself down in the golosh, and the voice began to sing.
"No, no, my dear,I do not fearThe devastating snow-ball;When it strikes me,I shriek with glee,And eat it like a dough-ball.""Halt!" cried the ice-guards. "Who are you?"
"I am a haunted overshoe," replied the voice. "I am on the foot of a phantom which only appears at uncertain hours, and is consequently now invisible to you.
"And, so I say,Oh, fire away,I fear ye not, icicles;Howe'er ye shoot,I can't but hoot,Your act so greatly tickles.""Shall we let it through?" asked the Captain of the guards.
"I move we do," said one High Private.
"I move we don't," said another.
"All in favor of doing one thing or the other say aye," cried the Captain.
"Aye!" roared the company.
"Contrary-minded, no," added the Captain.
"No!" roared the company.
