“That’s what that wretched Equator has been doing,” said Jack Frost sadly. “He’s spoiled a glacier that was a work of art—almost my masterpiece. I suppose when I get up to the North Pole I’ll find he has melted that. And if he has, it’ll spoil. You cannot possibly keep a North Pole unless you keep it on ice.”
“But,” cried Nimbus, who plainly did not share Jack Frost’s annoyance, “we can trace him now. That is where he must have lighted. Let’s go down there and see if we can find any trace of the Evening Star.”
He had hardly spoken when the car began rapidly to descend, and presently it was resting on a mountain top between two tall ice cliffs.
Jack Frost looked at them ruefully.
“That was my glacier,” he said. “My beautiful glacier—one of the best I ever built. And now look at it. Ruined, utterly ruined.”
Nimbus, who had been searching over the rocks, uttered a cry of pleasure.
“Look here,” he said. “The Equator got here first. The Evening Star did not come till later. So she is probably safe, after all.”
“How do you know that?” said Jack Frost.
“See,” said Nimbus. “When he got here and cleaned the snow off”—Jack Frost grunted disgustedly—“the flowers began to spring up. Here are daisies and buttercups and forget-me-nots and violets and trilliums, all growing where he turned the heat on.”
“I don’t see that that proves anything,” said Jack Frost.