The sleigh had just driven from the door, with a great jingling and shouting, and the little boy was left at home, with his foot up on the sofa, for he had a sprained ankle. “I wish I could have gone!” said the little boy.

“You shall go!” said Sister Sunshine. “We will go together, you and I!”

She brought a great book, with bright pictures in it, and sat down by the little boy’s side.

“First, we must choose our carriage!” she said. There was a whole page of carriage pictures, all very splendid, and after some thought they chose a gilded shell, with the front turning over into a swan’s neck. An Empress of Russia had driven in this, the book said, and so they thought it was good enough for them. The horses were coal-black, and there were six of them, four more than Papa and the other children had. Sister Sunshine tucked the little boy well up, and it appeared that the robes were all of ermine and sable, whereas, he had been thinking that they were only a striped afghan. One does not always know things till one is told.

“Here we go!” cried Sister Sunshine. “How the horses dash along! It takes my breath away! We are going to St. Petersburg to see the ice palace on the Neva. The Empress has sent her own private sleigh to take the little boy, and I can go, too, because I belong to him.”

She turned the page, and there, sure enough, was the ice palace. The sun shone splendidly on it, and it looked as if the fairies had built it.

“There is the Empress waiting for us!” said Sister Sunshine. “I suppose it would be polite to go in, wouldn’t it?” The little boy thought it would, decidedly, so they took the Empress’s hand and went in, through one grand room after another. The Empress gave them each a lovely little porcelain stove to carry under their arm, for the ice halls were cold.

“I am used to it,” she said, “and do not mind it.” She showed them all her jewels, which shone and sparkled like living flames; and then she brought them long sticks of candy, striped red and white, and cream walnuts, and barley sugar lions, just the things the little boy liked best; and they both said, how funny it was that she should know all about it, when the people at home so often forgot and gave him horehound, which he could not abide, and then said it was good for his cold.

After that they drove a long way over the ice, and the little boy thought he would like to go to Egypt and see if they knew their lessons about Moses there, because he sometimes forgot his. And there was Egypt, just a few pages off, with lots of pyramids, and the Sphinx, and all the right Egypty things. They got on camels and went to find some children, and there, to be sure, were plenty of them, all looking just exactly like the pictures in the Bible; but not a single one of them knew anything about Moses, which made the little boy feel more puffed up than he had any reason to be.

They left the carriage and got into a Nile boat, because they wanted to go over the Cataracts, and Sister Sunshine thought the horses might not like it; but before they got to the very first one the little boy was sound asleep, and he never woke up till the others came home from their sleigh ride. He was quite sure that they could not possibly have had so good a time as he had; and, anyhow, nobody had given them so much as a single bite of candy; they said that themselves.