"It's a bit of a drive," replied Jack, "but Old Yellow Horns and Prancing Hoof are fast goers. Gee-up! Gee-up!" he shouted at them, touching their flanks with the icicle whip. So fast they went they scarcely seemed to touch the snow, and on up the hill they rode towards the laughing Man-in-the-Moon.
Then suddenly there came such a barking, a yelping, a neighing, a mooing, a clucking, a gobbling, a squealing, a squawling, as you never heard before.
Around jerked Marmaduke's head.
There, behind the sleigh, running and leaping and paddling and waddling and frisking and scampering came a strange procession. There were Rover and Brownie and little Wienerwurst, Teddy and Methusaleh and all the horses, Primrose, Daisy, Buttercup, Black-Eyed Susan and all the cows. He could see their tongues hanging out—it was so hard to keep up with the dogs and the horses.
"Moo—moo, slow—slow!" called the poor cows.
And behind them ambled the sheep and the curley-tailed pigs; waddled the ducks and the geese; Miss Crosspatch, the Guinea Hen, and Mr. Stuckup, the turkey; and, at the very end, all of the White Wyandottes, the fathers and the mothers, and the little yellow children, and their grandfathers and grandmothers, and all their uncles and aunts, and their cousins, first, second, and third—every last one of them.
My—what a fuss and a clatter they made!
There was a long long line of them, stretching down the hill and down the white road over the snow.
Marmaduke laughed and exclaimed to Jack Frost:
"Why, they look just like the procession of the animals when they came out of the Ark."