“We’ll take this sunbeam with us”
“They get tired lying flat on their backs so much,” he said. “We’ll take this one with us when we go. When we’re hungry we’ll eat it.”
“But we’re not going anywhere,” said Billy. “At least I am not. I’ve got to go into the house and put the toys away in a few minutes.”
“Tut! tut!” said Nimbus. “Doesn’t the proverb say ‘Never do anything to-day you can just as well put off until to-morrow’? Let’s enchant a trolley car and go look after the Equator. I ought to be there now. That’s my job, looking after the Equator. I’ve left the Equine Ox there, but he has such a habit of getting indigestion in one of his four stomachs, and sometimes in all of them, that he is very inattentive to business.”
“Indigestion in four stomachs must be terribly distressing,” said Billy. “But what is an Equine Ox?”
“You surely see one twice a year,” said Nimbus. “But they are always around. They have to be somewhere.”
“I suppose they do,” said Billy, “but what are they?”
“Their names are Vernal and Autumnal. Here’s a poem I wrote about them once. My friends say I am conceited about my poetry, but I’m not. I don’t think it is as good as it really is.”
“I never had an Equine Ox
To glad me with its soft brown eye,