“Message, sir,” said the Meteor briskly, taking off his cap and extracting a blue envelope. Nimbus took it and ran his eye over it hastily. “Here’s a pretty kettle of fish,” he said, handing the paper to Billy. This is what Billy read as he held the paper in his trembling fingers: “Accidentally went to sleep and the Spring Tide broke the other tropic. Equator trying to get away, and think I can’t hold him long. Please come or send help as soon as possible. “Regretfully, VERNAL E. OX.” So! The Equator was trying to do the very thing Mother told Billy not to let him do! He was trying to slip off the earth by way of the South Pole! THE EQUATOR IS LOOSE CHAPTER III THE EQUATOR IS LOOSE “Bother that Equine Ox,” said Nimbus. “I might have known he’d do something like that, and just before procession week, too.” “Procession week?” said Billy wonderingly. “Yes, the week of the procession of the Equine Oxes. The Sun and the Moon and their oldest daughter, the Evening Star, were coming down to see it, and Jack Frost and Aurora Borealis ought to be there now. And that miserable Equine Ox has gone and spoiled it all. He isn’t fit for anything but a barbecue.” “What are you going to do?” asked Billy, while the conductor and the motorman gaped in a dazed silence. “Do? Why, fix it, of course. I only hope we can get there before he breaks away altogether. It would be a beautiful state of affairs to have an Equator charging up and down the world, wouldn’t it?” “I think it would be fun,” ventured Billy. “Oh, certainly!” said Nimbus. “When you played under the trees in your front yard, do you think it would be fun to have cocoanuts drop on you instead of acorns? Instead of rabbits and chipmunks in the woods, do you think it would be fun to see lions and tigers and boa-constrictors and laughing hyenas, to say nothing of hippopotamuses with teeth like banisters? Yes, it would be real jolly now, wouldn’t it?” Billy saw that Nimbus was seriously disturbed and he kept silent. The Meteor, who had entered the car unasked and taken a seat on the floor, now got up and began to shoot violently from one door to another, sometimes zigzagging so that he bumped the windows. His blazing tail trailed after him, and once or twice Billy had to draw back quickly to keep his face from a severe switching. The conductor and the motorman were very much annoyed by these antics, and at last the conductor said: “What’s the matter with him, anyway? Why don’t he sit still?” “He can’t sit still,” said Nimbus. “A meteor is a shooting star and ever so often he has to shoot.” “Shootin’ is against the rules,” growled the motorman. “No shootin’ allowed in any cars of this company.” “He isn’t shooting aloud. He’s shooting to himself,” said Nimbus. “I’ll send him back to the Equator as soon as I compose a message that is strong enough to tell the Equine Ox what I think of him.”