"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.