“BOTHER that Equine Ox,” said Nimbus. “I might have known he’d do something like that, and just before procession week, too.”
“Procession week?” said Billy wonderingly.
“Yes, the week of the procession of the Equine Oxes. The Sun and the Moon and their oldest daughter, the Evening Star, were coming down to see it, and Jack Frost and Aurora Borealis ought to be there now. And that miserable Equine Ox has gone and spoiled it all. He isn’t fit for anything but a barbecue.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Billy, while the conductor and the motorman gaped in a dazed silence.
“Do? Why, fix it, of course. I only hope we can get there before he breaks away altogether. It would be a beautiful state of affairs to have an Equator charging up and down the world, wouldn’t it?”
“I think it would be fun,” ventured Billy.
“Oh, certainly!” said Nimbus. “When you played under the trees in your front yard, do you think it would be fun to have cocoanuts drop on you instead of acorns? Instead of rabbits and chipmunks in the woods, do you think it would be fun to see lions and tigers and boa-constrictors and laughing hyenas, to say nothing of hippopotamuses with teeth like banisters? Yes, it would be real jolly now, wouldn’t it?”
Billy saw that Nimbus was seriously disturbed and he kept silent.
The Meteor, who had entered the car unasked and taken a seat on the floor, now got up and began to shoot violently from one door to another, sometimes zigzagging so that he bumped the windows. His blazing tail trailed after him, and once or twice Billy had to draw back quickly to keep his face from a severe switching.
The conductor and the motorman were very much annoyed by these antics, and at last the conductor said: