Part 1 (2/2)
”I guess I was in great luck,” said Jimmieboy. ”I might have had a much harder time than I did.”
”I should say so,” said the bicycle. ”A scratch and loss of appet.i.te, when you might just as easily have had your whole personal appearance changed, is getting off very cheap. But, I say, why didn't you turn aside instead of trying to ride over that lawn mower? Didn't you know you'd get yourself into trouble?”
”Of course I didn't,” said Jimmieboy. ”You don't suppose I wanted to commit soozlecide, do you? I heard papa talking to mamma about the rheumatic tires on his bicycle, and he said they were great inventions because they made the wheel boy--boy--well, boy something, I don't remember what.”
”Boyant?” asked the little bicycle, scratching its cyclometer with its pedal.
”Yes--that was it,” said Jimmieboy. ”He said the rheumatic tires made the thing boyant, and I asked him what that meant. He said boyant was a word meaning light and airy--like a boy, you know, and that boyancy in a bicycle meant that it could jump over almost anything.”
”That is so,” said Bikey. ”That's what they have those tires for, but they can't jump over a lawn mower--unless”----Here Bikey paused and glanced anxiously around. It was evident that he had some great secret in his mind.
”Unless what?” asked Jimmieboy, his curiosity at once aroused.
”Unless a patent idea of mine, which you and I could try if you wanted to, is good.”
Bikey's voice sank into a whisper.
”There's millions in my idea if it'll work,” he continued. ”Do you see this?” he asked, holding up his front wheel. ”This tire I have on is filled with air, and it makes me seem light as air--but it's only seeming. I'm heavy, as you found out when you tried to get me to jump over the lawn mower, but if I could only do a thing I want to you could go sailing over a church steeple as easily as you can ride me over a lawn.”
”You mean to say you'd fly?” asked Jimmieboy, delighted at the idea.
”No--not exactly,” returned Bikey. ”I never could fly and never wanted to. Birds do that, and you can buy a bird for two dollars; but a bicycle costs you anywhere from fifty to a hundred, which shows how much more valuable bicycles are than birds. No, I don't want to fly, but I would like to float.”
”On water?” asked Jimmieboy.
”No, no, no; in the air,” said the little bicycle impatiently--”like a balloon. Wouldn't that be fine? Anybody can float on the water, even an old cork; but when it comes to floating in the air, that's not only fun but it means being talented. A bicycle that could float in the air would be the finest thing in the world.”
”That's very likely true,” said Jimmieboy, ”but how are you going to do it? You can't soar.”
”Not with my tires filled with air,” replied Bikey, ”but if you'll take the hose from the gas stove and fasten one end to the supply valve of my tires, the other to the gas fixture, fill the tires up with gas and get aboard I'll bet you we can have a ride that'll turn out to be a regular sky-sc.r.a.per.”
It sounded like an attractive proposition, but Jimmieboy wanted to know something more about it before consenting to trifle with the gas pipe.
”What good'll the gas do?” he asked.
”Why, don't you know that gas makes balloons go up?” said Bikey. ”They just cram the balloon as full of gas as they can get it and up she sails. That's my idea. Fill my rubber tires with gas and up we'll go.
What do you say?”
”I'll do it,” cried Jimmieboy with enthusiasm. ”I'd love more than anything else to go biking through the clouds, for to tell the truth clouds look a great deal softer than grocery carts and lawn mowers, and I wouldn't mind running into one of them so much. Skybicycling”----
”Pooh! What a term,” retorted Bikey. ”Skybicycling! Why don't you use your mind a little and call it skycycling?”
Jimmieboy laughed.
”Perhaps skycling would be better than that,” he suggested.
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