At any rate, Mrs. Speedwell and Carrie prepared a room for the stranger. He had a suit of Dan’s pajamas to sleep in, and little ’Dolph had become so friendly with him that he insisted on the visitor’s taking to bed with him one of Adolph’s newest and most precious toys—an air-gun.
The visitor retired after saying something that must have been a grateful response to Mrs. Speedwell’s kindliness.
“By gracious!” exclaimed Mr. Speedwell, slapping his knee, “that surely sounds like English—only he mumbles it so. Sounds just as though he were tongue-tied.”
“Not at all,” Billy added. “But I never heard anybody as tongue-tied as all _that_.”
The Speedwells were not late to bed—especially on such a night as this. The wind howled and the snow continued until midnight; but when the alarm clock awoke Billy and Dan in their room at two o’clock, the storm had ceased and a faint strip of moon was struggling amidst the breaking clouds.
The snow was not too deep for the auto-truck, although the brothers could not get over their long route as quickly as usual. School was in session and Dan and Billy put in full time every school day, in spite of the milk delivery.
They were spinning out the river road towards Colonel Sudds’s place, beyond the Darringford Machine Shops, about half past seven, with only a few more customers to deliver to, when Billy caught sight of something on the river that interested him immensely.
“Look at that flyer, Dan!” he cried. “Iceboat, sure as you are an inch high!”
“I’m several feet more than an inch tall, Billy,” chuckled his brother, “so that _must_ be an iceboat and no hallucination.”
“Don’t pull any of the ‘high brow stuff,’ as Biff Hardy calls it,” returned slangy Billy Speedwell. “And tell me, pray, who owns an iceboat around Riverdale?”
“I didn’t even suppose the ice was thick enough to bear a boat,” returned Dan, who was quite as surprised at the appearance of the swooping craft as his brother.
The river bank fell abruptly from the edge of the road. Dan had brought the truck to a halt, for both boys were immensely interested.
Anything that flew like that craft on the ice below, was bound to hold the attention of the brothers. They were well named, their chums at the Riverdale Academy declared. Billy Speedwell had never yet traveled fast enough to suit him, and Dan was just as much of a “speed maniac.”