What is the meaning of “in his hat five ways”?

What is the meaning of “in his hat five ways”: (from Carl Sandburg’s Rootabaga Stories)

One little sniffer with his eyes half shut and a mitten on his nose, laughed in his hat five ways and said.

To laugh in one's hat is an idiom meaning "conceal one's amusement or glee"—you don't allow others to see that you are amused or that you have secured some great advantage.

In this case it appears that the 'little sniffer' is excited by Gimme the Ax's project of going somewhere where things are not always the same; but he conceals his excitement and ironically echoes the prevailing wisdom, that things are always the same, even if you go to the moon.

Five ways suggests that the 'little sniffer' found five different sources of amusement in the situation; but having read even just the first paragraphs of this story you are no doubt already aware that Sandburg uses language as much to entertain as to communicate information. I think it's just an intensifier.