ACROSS THE RAINBOW
“OH, IF I could only get over there!” moaned Billy. He had not stopped to think what he would do if he were there. His eagerness to help the Evening Star was so keen that he was almost ready to leap the abyss before him. He even went to the brink and tried to calculate his chances of getting across with a running jump, but he saw that the best jumper in the world could not have got half way over before he would have tumbled into the icy depths below. So, with a sigh, he sat down to think.
Billy did not mean to cry—he never meant to cry—but the sight of the Equator hovering so closely over the Evening Star and melting down the snow mountain like a wax taper brought an unbidden tear or two to his eyes, and they rolled slowly down his cheeks.
One of them fell on his stocking, where it quickly froze, and Billy, looking at it disconsolately, observed that it shone with the hues of the rainbow in the light thrown off by the Equator.
Suddenly he leaped to his feet, dancing for joy.
“The Rays!” he cried, “they will build me a bridge!”
And he called them by name one after another:
“Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange and Red!”
Instantly the little people stood before him, and Red, who was their spokesman, asked him what he desired.
“A bridge!” cried Billy. “A bridge as quickly as you can.”
It was the work of a second. The little people all sprang into the air together and lo! in front of Billy stretched a slender rainbow bridge, leading from his feet to the snow mountain on which was the imprisoned Evening Star. And at each end was a great pot of yellow gold as large as a preserve kettle.
Bravely Billy started to cross the bridge. It trembled violently in the strong light, as rainbows will, for they are flimsy things at best. Billy hesitated. He was not frightened, but it was so hard to keep his balance.
And then he heard a cheery shout behind him, and up came Jack Frost running as fast as his legs could carry him, and fairly panting with excitement.
“It’s all right, Billy, go ahead!” he called, laying a steadying hand on the rainbow, which at once hardened under his cold.
Thus encouraged Billy proceeded. As he went on he noticed that the snow mountain had ceased to melt. Indeed, it was beginning slowly to rise in the air again, thanksto the influence of Jack Frost, who was freezing the water far faster than the Equator could melt it.
Up, up it went, its peak narrowing to a needle point. Above it the Equator, unused to the cold, shriveled and shrank. Now he was the size of a hoop, now of a doughnut, presently he was scarcely larger than a ring.
“Slide!” shouted a familiar voice behind Billy. “Slide, Evening Star, slide for your life!”
The Evening Star heard the voice, and she, as well as Billy, recognized it as the voice of Nimbus.
“The snow mountain is the North Pole!” cried Nimbus. “I just asked an Eskimo where it was and he pointed it out. I came just in time, didn’t I?”
The last question was addressed to the Evening Star, who had followed his advice and slid right into his arms.
“I jumped the gully,” said Nimbus, pointing to the abyss. “There wasn’t time to come over the bridge. And now I think we’ve got the Equator where we want him.”
“Where do you want me?” snarled the Equator.
“Over this Pole,” said Nimbus, and as he spoke he slid up the North Pole as a sailor slides down a rope, grasped the Equator and impaled him upon it.
He rolled him down and down until Jack Frost could reach him and help hold him, and the Equator, feeling himself stretched like an elastic over the conical snow peak, saw that he was doomed to be rolled back around the earth and resume his post of duty in the center.
“I won’t do it,” he protested. “I’ll never do it!”
He struggled and twisted in his efforts to escape, but Nimbus held him fast, and Jack Frost kept him small by the clutch of his icy fingers.
Billy danced up and down in his excitement, for once the Equator almost got away.
“Go on down! Go on down!” shouted Billy. “My mother says you are only an imaginary line, anyway!”
“Why, Billy,” said his mother, “look at the way you have eaten up your poor North Pole!”
And at the sound of his mother’s voice Nimbus put a sunbeam into Billy’s mouth which tasted just like lemon candy. The clang of the enchanted trolley car sounded in his ears as the whole lot of his new friends stepped aboard and vanished from his sight. He looked around. But, instead of Nimbus and the Evening Star and Jack Frost and the Equator, he found his mother smiling down at him as he lay under the lilac bush, and the conductor was just ringing the bell for the trolley car to stop at the corner.
THE END
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.The illustrations listed on pages 28, 32, 48, and 78 in the List of Illustrations do not exist in the original text.Alternate or archaic spelling has been retained from the original.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
The illustrations listed on pages 28, 32, 48, and 78 in the List of Illustrations do not exist in the original text.
Alternate or archaic spelling has been retained from the original.