Читать книгу The Runaway Equator, and the Strange Adventures of a Little Boy in Pursuit of It онлайн

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“We’ll soon be coming to the Dog Star,” Nimbus told Billy. “His name is Sirius, but he isn’t. He’s almost eight million years old, but he still behaves like a Puppy Star at the snow-making season. He worries the Snow Fairies half to death.”

“What are Snow Fairies?” asked Billy.

“They are the people that make the snow. Didn’t you ever hear the proverb, ‘Make snow while the moon shines’?”

Billy wasn’t quite sure. He had heard one very much like that, though, about hay, and he wondered if they made snow in fields and left it out to dry in the moonshine.

“Yes,” said Nimbus, although Billy had not spoken, “it is very much the same. The snowflakes grow on the little stalks that shoot up from the clouds, and the Snow Fairies harvest them and dry them in the moonlight. Then they sift it down on the land and sea, whenever Jack Frost says the little boys and girls are tired of nutting and making autumn-leaf bonfires, and want to coast and throw snowballs.”

“Do they make hail that way, too?” asked Billy.