"But I want to slide," said Jimmieboy, "and I'm afraid there'll be a slaw come along and melt the snow."
Jimmieboy always called thaws slaws, so his mother wasn't surprised at this remark, and in a few minutes the boy was ready to coast.
"Come along, Magic!" he said, gleefully catching up the rope. "We'll see now if Uncle Periwinkle was right when he said he didn't think you'd go more'n a mile a minute, unless you had a roller-skate on both your runners."
And then, though Jimmieboy did not notice it, the left-hand swan-head winked its eye at the other swan-head and whispered, "Humph! It's plain Uncle Periwinkle doesn't know that we are a magic sled."
"Well, why should he?" returned the other swan-head, with a laugh. "He never slode on us."
"I'm glad I'm not an uncle," said the left-hand head. "Uncles don't know half as much as we do."
"And why should they!" put in the other. "They haven't had the importunities we have for gaining knowledge. A man who has lived all his days in one country and which has never slad around the world like us has, don't see things the way us would."
And still Jimmieboy did not notice that the swan-heads were talking together, though I can hardly blame him for that, because, now that he was out of doors he had to keep his eyes wide open to keep from bumping his head into the snow balls the hired man was throwing at him. In a few minutes, however, he did notice the peculiar fact and he was so surprised that he sat plump down on the red back of the sled and was off for—well, where the sled took him, and of all the slides that ever were slid, that was indeed the strangest. No sooner had he sat down than with a leap that nearly threw him off his balance, the swans started. The steel runners crackled merrily over the snow, and the wind itself was soon left behind.
"C-can you sus-swans tut-talk?" Jimmieboy cried, in amazement, as soon as he could get his breath.
"Oh, no, of course not," said the right-hand swan. "We can't talk, can we Swanny?"