"All around in winter. In summer he goes north for his health."
"And can't anybody ever get rid of him?"
"No. The only way to do that successfully would be to burn him out, and so far nobody has ever been able to do it entirely. You can put him out of your own house; but, if he wants to, he'll stay around the place and nip your plants, and freeze up your wells, and put a web of ice on your grass and sidewalks in spite of anything you can do."
By this time little Russ had quieted down and gone to sleep. The cold cream, aided by a huge bottleful of the food he liked best, which warmed up his little heart and various other parts of his being, to which the world had for a little while seemed bleak and drear, had put him in a contented frame of mind, and if the smile on his lips meant anything he had forgotten his woes in dreams of sweet and lovely things.
It was not so, however, with Jimmieboy, who grew more and more indignant as he thought of that great lumbering ice-man, Jack Frost, coming along and biting his dear little brother in that cruel fashion. It was simply cowardly, he thought. Of course Jimmieboy could understand how any one might wish to take a bite of something that was as sweet as little Russ was, and when mosquitoes did it he was not disposed to quarrel with them, because it was courageous in a minute insect like a mosquito to risk his life for his sweetmeats, but with Jack Frost it was different. Why didn't he take a man of his size like papa, for instance, or the grocer man? He was afraid to—that was it—and so he fastened upon a poor, helpless little man like Russ, only eleven months old.
"He ought to be hitted on the head," said Jimmieboy.
"That wouldn't do any good," said papa. "It wouldn't hurt him a bit. You couldn't kill him with a hundred ice-picks, and I don't believe even a steam-drill would lay him up more than a week. What he's afraid of is heat—only heat, and nothing else. That cracks him all up and melts him, so that he can't bite anything."
Then Jimmieboy had his supper and began playing with his toys until bedtime should come, but all the time his mind was on that cruel Jack Frost. Something else in the room was thinking about it, too, only Jimmieboy didn't know it. The little gas-stove that stood guard over by the fire-place was quite as angry about Jack's behavior as anybody, but he kept very still until along about eight o'clock when he began to sputter.
Jimmieboy stopped pushing his iron engine over the floor, and looked with heavy eyes at the gas-stove. This was extraordinary behavior for the stove, and Jimmieboy wondered what was the matter.
"Say!" whispered the stove, as Jimmieboy looked at him. "Let's get after that Frost fellow and make him wish he never was born."