Billy Whiskers - Frances Trego Montgomery (learn to read books .TXT) 📗
- Author: Frances Trego Montgomery
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All mother said was, "That goat has to be sold, Silas Wagner, I told you that trouble would come when you brought that long whiskered animal home."
And the next day the goat was sold.
he day after Billy Whiskers was sold to the Biggses he was shut in a small yard to keep him out of mischief. Feeling lonesome, he thought that he would jump the fence and look around a little. He was getting cross-eyed looking through the palings of the fence which were very close together, so suiting the action to the thought, he vaulted over the fence, landing in a kettle of scarlet dye, that had been left there to cool. When he got out of the kettle the fore-part of him was scarlet, and the hind, white, but he did not mind that, so after shaking the drops from his eyes and beard, he was as ready to explore as if nothing had happened.
Seeing the kitchen door open, he went up the steps softly and looked in. He could see no one in the kitchen, and smelling some nice sweet-cakes, which had just been taken out of the oven and placed on the table, he walked cautiously across the floor and began to eat them. From the floor he could only reach a few, so he mounted a chair, and from that stepped onto the table. As he did so, he stepped into a large loaf cake with frosting on it. While kicking that off, and licking the frosting off his feet, he caught sight of a nice red apple that one of the children had put on a small shelf for safe keeping. This he quickly packed away where moth and rust doth not corrupt. Hearing some noise, he was about to get off the table, when raising his head, he faced another goat. But this goat must have come from the infernal regions for in all his life he had never seen such a villainous looking fellow. Billy was no coward, so he backed off as far as the table would allow, and then butted forward as hard as he could. A crash! a bang! and the other goat was upon him, and they both rolled off the table.
Where had the other goat disappeared when he had butted him, and what was this thing around his neck? A looking-glass frame, with little pieces of glass sticking in it. Backing out of the frame, Billy went in pursuit of the other goat; for he did not know that it was his own image he had butted in the kitchen looking-glass. Seeing a dark hall-way, he went boldly in, and walked on toward a light he saw at the other end. Arriving there, he found that the light came from a window in the parlor. He marched in, still looking for his rival, but soon forgot him in gazing at the things in the room, especially a fancy basket of fruit under a glass cover. Now Billy was very partial to fruit of all kinds, so he upset the marble-top table the basket was setting on and out rolled all the luscious looking fruit. He bit into a rosy cheeked peach, but of all fruit he had ever eaten, this was the most tasteless and tough. It stuck to his teeth so he could not separate his upper jaw from his lower. Just then he heard voices, and some one say:
"Susie, I heard a terrible crash down stairs. You had better run down and see what it was. You may have left the kitchen door open and the cat possibly came in and upset something."
Then he heard Susie say, "All right, Mum."
He thought that if anyone was coming down he had better get out so he started on a run, but the door at the end of the hall had blown shut, and the only other way of escape was up the front stairs. As he reached the top, he saw Susie who had been scrubbing the top of the back stairs, throw down her brush, preparatory to going to see what the noise was. They both caught sight of each other at the same moment, and Susie thought the long, sinister looking, scarlet-bearded face with the horns, that appeared at the top of the stairs, was the devil; and with a blood-curdling scream she threw up her hands and rolled to the foot of the stairs, upsetting the pail of suds that she had clutched when she felt herself falling. There she lay too frightened to move, but Billy rushed on trying to find a way out for he commenced to feel that there would be trouble if he were found.
Mrs. Biggs, hearing Susie scream, rushed to the door with her mouth full of tacks, and a hammer in her hand, just in time to get butted into by Billy, which laid her flat on her back in less time than you can wink. As luck would have it, the shock made her open her mouth and the tacks flew out for if she had swallowed them she would never have gotten off her back.
Billy Whiskers gave her one look when he saw what he had done, and turned and fled back down the stairs, and out the front door between the legs of Mr. Biggs who was just coming in, and Billy being a big goat, and Mr. Biggs a short, stout man, there was not much room to go through, but it was the first daylight Billy had seen, so he gave Mr. Biggs a boost as he straddled his back, which helped him to fall off, over the side of the porch where he landed in a nice soft bed of geraniums.
As Billy was a knowing goat, he decided that they would not care for him after what had happened, nor look for him if he disappeared, so seeing the front gate open, he ran out and trotted down the road and that was the last that was heard of him. His surmises were right. The Biggses never even looked for him.
fter Billy Whiskers had left Mr. Biggs, he trotted slowly down the road wondering where he would get his next meal for he well knew he would never dare go back to Mr. Biggses after upsetting him in the geranium bed and causing all the mischief he had there that day. But being a goat of a cheerful frame of mind and used to looking out for himself, he did not worry much, and decided he would enter the first garden he came to, and make a free lunch off the vegetables, or go into a turnip patch and feast on them for if there was anything he doted on it was nice, sweet turnips, fresh from the fields.
He had gone some distance, and no patch or garden appearing that was not enclosed by a high, barbed-wire fence, he commenced to get discouraged. Feeling hungry and thirsty he was about wishing he had behaved himself at Mr. Biggses so he could go back, when he came to a turn in the road and there before him stood a frame building, with the door open and over the door a large picture of a white Polar bear sitting on a cake of ice, drinking a foaming glass of soda-water, while in a circle round him sat little bears, each with a glass of something cool to drink.
"This is just the place I have been looking for," thought Billy, "where thirsty animals can get a drink." So in he walked, much to the fright of a party of picnickers, who were sitting around a little table drinking soda-water and lemonade, and eating ice-cream.
The man at the soda fountain on seeing Billy was so surprised that he forgot to turn off the fizz he was putting into a glass of soda he was mixing, and it foamed up and ran up his sleeve and all over everything.
This caused the young people to laugh, which made the young man behind the counter mad. He picked up a bottle of ginger-ale and pretended to throw it at Billy, but alas for his intentions! He raised it too high; it hit a large bottle of syrup that stood on a shelf behind him, breaking both bottles at the same time, and instead of hurting Billy, he got a sticky bath of syrup and a shower of ginger in his own eyes. This was adding insult to injury, he thought, and this last mishap turned the laughter of the crowd into a scream of merriment which did not lessen his anger in the least. He grabbed a broom that stood near by and jumping over the counter went for Billy, who all this time had been standing still, doing nothing but looking at the man and waiting for him to give him a drink of some kind.
When Billy saw the man jump over the counter with the broom, he knew he was after him but at the same time he made up his mind that he would not leave that store until he had had a drink of something,—man or no man.
So when the man made a lunge at him with the broom, Billy made a quick rush at the man and planted his head in the middle of the fellow's stomach sending him sprawling on the floor where he landed in the midst of a shower of tooth-brushes he had upset as he flew by the show cases.
This catastrophe frightened the girls and boys who had been sitting sipping soda and laughing at the man, and there was a mad scramble to get out but Billy was too
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