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 without
A 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.