"Quick! Quick! Jump aboard or I'll be off without you. Is the door open?" "No," said Jimmieboy, clambering into the saddle, after turning off the gas and screwing the caps firmly on both tires, "b--but the par--par--parlor window is." "Good," cried Bikey. "We'll sail through that! Give the right pedal a good turn; now--one--two--three--we're off!" And they were off. Out of the hall they flew, through the parlor without touching the floor, and then sailed through the window out into the moonlight night. "Isn't it great," cried Bikey, trembling with delight. "Greatest that ever was," said Jimmieboy. "But, hi! Take care, turn to the left, quick." A great spike of some sort had loomed up before them. "Excuse me," said Bikey, giving a quick turn. "I was so happy I wasn't looking where we were going. If you hadn't spoken we'd have got stuck on that church steeple sure enough." II _WHEELING ON THE BIG RING OF SATURN_ "Hadn't we better go a little higher?" asked Jimmieboy. "There's a lot of these tall steeples about here, and it wouldn't be any fun if we pricked a hole in one of these tires on a weather vane." "We are going higher all the time," said Bikey. "There isn't a steeple in the world can touch us now. What we want to keep away from now are eagles and snow clad Alps." "Ho! snow clad Alps," laughed Jimmieboy. "There aren't any Alps in America, they're all in Europe." "Well, where are you? You don't suppose we've been standing still all this time, do you? If you'd studied your geography lessons as well as you ought to you'd be able to tell one country from another. You are wheeling directly over France now. In ten minutes we'll be over Germany, and in fifteen, if you turned to the south, you'd simply graze the top of Mont Blanc." "Let's," said Jimmieboy. "I want to see a glazier." "A what?" asked Bikey. "A glazier," answered Jimmieboy. "It's a big slide." "Oh, you mean a glacier," said Bikey, shaking all over with laughter. "I thought you meant a man to put in a pane of glass, and it struck me that Mont Blanc was a curious place to go looking for one. Shall we turn south?" "If you don't mind," said Jimmieboy. "Seems to me we might coast down Mont Blanc, and have a pretty good time of it." "Oh, if that's what you're after, I won't do it," said Bikey. "Coasting isn't a good thing for beginners like you, particularly on the Alps. Take a hill of your own size. Furthermore, we haven't come out to explore the earth. I was going to take you off to the finest bicycle track you ever saw. I never saw it either, but I've seen pictures of it. It's a great level gold road running about another world called Saturn. We call it Saturn's ring down home, but I've ideas as to what it is." "Seems to me I've heard papa speak of Saturn. It's got eight moons, I think he said. One for every day of the week, and two for Sunday," said Jimmieboy.