The weather kept getting colder and colder; presently the boat was stuck fast in the ice. Of course the wagon was also frozen tight, and the captain let go of the “line” as he called it.
“There!” cried the wagon angrily. “I knew what you’d bring us into.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so if you knew so much?” said the captain.
“Say so! Could you say so if somebody was pulling you along by the tongue?” demanded the wagon.
The captain replied and the wagon retorted, and the quarrel was becoming very unpleasant, when along came a pair of skates without anybody on them.
“Boat ahoy! Wagon ahoy! Boy ahoy!” cried the skates. “Christmas is coming!”
“Take me along to meet it, please?” asked the Man Mite, and in another moment he was on the skates and skating faster and easier than he had ever skated in his life before. He skated for a long time, and passed fields where plum puddings were growing like pumpkins, trees where candy boys hung like pears, and snowdrifts which upon closer acquaintance proved to be huge frosted cakes. Curiously enough, fields and trees and drifts were all moving and cried out, “We’re going to meet Christmas!”
After what seemed to him a long time, much to his surprise and joy he met a boy, seemingly of his own age. The Man Mite was almost sure he had seen his face before, and yet, when he came to look at him again, he was surer still that he hadn’t, for certainly he had never seen a boy with a fur cap, fur coat, fur boots, and fur trousers! He noticed, too, that while the boy’s face was round and chubby, his hair was white; not merely tow-headed, like Willie Perkins’s, and Pete Judson’s, but pure white.
“Hello!” said the stranger. “What’s your name?”
“They call me Man Mite. What’s yours?”