Читать книгу The Runaway Equator, and the Strange Adventures of a Little Boy in Pursuit of It - Bell Lilian - Страница 3

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MOTHER had been helping Billy with his geography lesson, sitting in the garden on a lovely day early in spring, and showing Billy how the earth revolves on its axis. To illustrate this difficult matter and to make it interesting, she had taken a big yellow orange to represent the Earth and had used a stick of lemon candy for the Pole. She made the Equator out of a black rubber band such as you put around fat envelopes.

Then, when Billy said that he understood, Mother dug a hole in the orange and stuck the lemon stick in it and, handing it to Billy, said with a droll twinkle in her blue eyes, which always seemed to be laughing:

“Would you like to eat up the Earth through the North Pole?”

Now Billy had never before tasted the joys of an orange eaten through a stick of lemon candy; so when Mother, who had a trick of remembering nice things from her own childhood, showed Billy how it was done, he settled down to a blissful half hour in which he meant to devour the whole earth.

It tasted so good that he rolled over on the short grass, under a lilac-bush in full bloom, and only took his lips from the North Pole long enough to tell his mother that it tasted “bully.”

“Well,” said his mother, standing up and shaking out her blue dress, “I must go now. Here is your geography. Don’t forget to bring it in when you come, and don’t lose the Equator off the Earth, even if you are eating it. I don’t know what would become of us if the Equator really should get away!”

Billy laughed aloud. It really was no trouble at all to understand things when Mother made them appear so funny.

He lay on his back looking up into the sky, which was just the color of his mother’s blue dress. White clouds, like mountains of white feathers which must be very soft to sleep on, were over his head.

A bee was buzzing lazily over the lavender blossoms of the lilacs. A soft wind was blowing. It was indeed very pleasant.

What if the bee should turn into a fairy!

“Why don’t you?” said Billy aloud.

The bee, being puzzled, scratched his head with his left hindfoot and answered:

“Why don’t I what?”

“Why don’t you be one?”

“I am one bee!” answered the bee, striking a match on Billy’s orange and lighting a grapevine cigarette.

“Could you be a fairy?” asked Billy.

“I am always beeing things—flowers and honey—so of course I could bee a fairy. How do you know that I am not one? Look at me!”

Billy sat up and looked.

“Well, I never!” exclaimed Billy. “A minute ago I thought you were a bee!”

“I can bee anything I choose,” said the Fairy. “That’s why you thought I was a bee. Because I can bee!”

“Who are you now?” asked Billy.

“I am the Geography Fairy,” answered the stranger.

He held out his hand and then looked at it.

“It’s not raining yet,” he observed; “still——”

Without finishing his sentence he unfolded a pink parasol and tossed it into the air. It sailed away, slowly at first, then more rapidly as the light wind caught it and carried it out of sight beyond the lilac-bush.

“I won’t need it till it begins to rain,” he explained, “so they might as well have it.”

“Who?” gasped Billy.

“The sunbeams. If a sunbeam gets wet he’s done for. Haven’t you ever noticed that?”

Billy thought he had noticed something of the kind. Anyway the sunbeams all disappeared directly it began to rain. But being just an ordinary little boy, he was much more interested in the conversation of the wonderful stranger than he was in sunbeams, and that is why he asked:

“What is your name, if you please?”

“My name is Nimbus and I live in the clouds with the other fairies. I was named after one of the clouds.”

“But,” objected Billy, “I don’t believe in fairies.”

“Very well,” said Nimbus briskly, “keep right on don’t believing. It doesn’t disturb me in the least.”

“And besides,” said Billy, “there couldn’t be such a thing as a Geography Fairy.”

“How do you know?” demanded Nimbus.

“Because,” said Billy, “I have never seen one.”

“Nonsense!” returned Nimbus. “Did you ever see a noise?”

“No,” Billy admitted, “I don’t think I ever did. At least I don’t remember ever having seen one.”

“Well, do you believe that there aren’t any noises?”

Billy had no reply that seemed suitable, and so he said nothing.

Apparently not caring whether he got an answer or not, Nimbus leaped lightly from the lilac blossom and, picking up an irregular sunbeam that filtered through the bush, he set it carefully on edge against the brim of Billy’s hat.

“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,

But when I stroked its brindled locks

It always rudely asked me why.

“I never whispered fondly in

The creature’s smooth and velvet ear,

That it did not absurdly grin

And shed a cadent, mirthful tear.

“I never clasped its crumpled horn,

Nor gazed on it with loving look,

That it did not give moos of scorn

And sometimes even try to hook.

“So, though I love the Equine Ox,

I must admit that, on the whole,

His conduct very often shocks

My trusting and confiding soul.”

“That,” said Nimbus, “will give you an excellent idea of the Equine Ox. Now let us enchant that trolley car and be off about our business.”

“Pooh!” said Billy, “you can’t enchant a trolley car.”

“There you go again,” said Nimbus, “never believing in things. Bring me a trolley car and I’ll show you whether or not I can enchant it.”

“I can’t bring you a trolley car,” said Billy. “You’ll have to hail one on the street if you want one. Anyway they don’t go to the Equator; they only go to town.”

“We’ll see where they go,” returned Nimbus. “If I were going alone I’d go on a cloud, but I don’t suppose you could sit on a cloud, could you?”

He regarded Billy doubtfully.

“I’m sure I couldn’t,” said Billy. “Besides, what’s the need of going at all?”

“Oh, I really must go! A foolish Spring Tide broke one of the tropics the other day, and if the other gets broken there will be nothing to hold the Equator down but the meridians, and you know they’re very fragile.”

Billy didn’t know that, but he nodded intelligently. It is always best to pretend to know more about geography than you really do.

“We’ll be back in time for dinner,” continued Nimbus; “that is, if I don’t have to fasten up the tides again.”

“Why,” said Billy, “you don’t mean to say you have to fasten the tides?”

“Certainly!” replied Nimbus. “You know the tides are always trying to put out the Moon, and they go chasing around the Earth after her night and day. Of course the shore stops them after a while and drives them back, and that’s what makes them high and low. They’re high when they run up and try to wash over the shore, and low when the shore drives them back again. But to keep them from going too far we tie them down with meridians. That’s why they call them tides. Each one is tied, don’t you see?”

“Gracious!” exclaimed Billy. “I hope they can’t get untied and put the Moon out.”

“Oh, they won’t,” Nimbus assured him, “while I’m watching them! Sometimes they sneak up on her out of the ocean in little drops that we call mist, but the Sun always catches them at it, and sends them scurrying down in rain again.”

“I almost believe I’ll go,” said Billy, “if you’re sure we can be back in time.”

“Not a doubt of it,” said Nimbus; “I’ll send you back on a meteor if I have to stay.”

Billy excused himself for a minute and ran into the house to tell his mother, but she was nowhere to be found. So he wrote a note in which he explained that he had gone away for a little while with the Geography Fairy. Returning to the garden, he found that Nimbus had now grown to be as large as a middle-sized baby. He was strolling across the lawn on his way to the front gate.

Billy trudged along by his side, and soon they were at the street corner awaiting the coming of a big red trolley car, which Billy hailed at Nimbus’s suggestion.

When the two got in the conductor looked at the queer little stranger in amazement.

But Nimbus only nodded at him coldly, leaped up on the seat and began digging into his pocket, from which he presently pulled a huge blue transfer.

This he held out when the conductor came for the fare.

“That ain’t no good,” said the conductor.

For reply Nimbus folded the transfer up into a tiny wand, touched the conductor on the cap with it and said:

“This car for the Equator. Passengers desiring transfers for the Arctic Circle or the North Pole will kindly mention it before we get to Cuba.”

“Nimbus folded the transfer into a tiny wand and said:

‘This car for the Equator!’”