The motorman and conductor gathered around. “Jab him in the ribs with the crank handle,” suggested the conductor. “It’s the way we do when they faints on the car.”
But Nimbus revived before this became necessary.
“It gave me such a start,” he said.
“The Equator’s got a better one,” said the Equine Ox.
“Everything’s easy once you get a start,” commented the motorman.
Nimbus was now himself, and a very energetic little self he was. First he placed the conductor and the motorman in charge of the Equine Ox, with orders not to let him out of their sight.
“He must be here to-morrow,” he said, “or the procession cannot go on, and if the procession does not go on it will always be summer and the sea will dry up.”
The motorman and the conductor were scarcely eager to undertake the charge, but something in Nimbus’s manner convinced them that it was necessary, so they consented.
“You,” said Nimbus to the Evening Star, “will please go and tell your father that the Equator is off the Earth and that I will try to catch him.”
“And you,” he said to Billy, “come with me. As soon as the Equator is off the Earth, he will shrink up to the size of a barrel hoop, and the meanness in his disposition condensed into that small space will make a perfect fiend of him. He is liable to drop right down on us this very minute and burn us into a cinder before you can say ‘Jack Robinson.’ He gets so hot when he’s angry that he has been known to set an iceberg on fire. By the way,” he added, “how quickly can you say ‘Jack Robinson’?”