Billy Whiskers - Frances Trego Montgomery (learn to read books .TXT) 📗
- Author: Frances Trego Montgomery
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And before Billy knew what was up, he was led out and made to march in the procession between the engine and hose-cart. After they had started he rather enjoyed it for from all sides he heard the people say:
"There, look! There goes the goat that saved the baby's life."
"Isn't he a beauty?"
"See what nice, white, silky hair he has!"
"Yes," Billy thought, "if they could have seen the firemen scrubbing me, I expect they would have laughed like the policemen did." But it all tickled his vanity for Billy was as conceited a goat as you could well find.
They had been marching for some time and Billy was getting tired of the slow gait and being made to stay between the engine and hose-cart instead of riding on the hose-cart as he had been in the habit of doing, when he heard the plaintive bleat of a goat and the sound of a whip.
"My!" thought Billy, "how that voice reminds me of Nanny."
Just then a little cart, with a can of milk in it, drawn by a goat came in sight around the corner, and who should be pulling it but Nanny, with the big, clumsy Mike Rooney cracking the whip at her and every once in a while giving her a stinging cut which had caused Nanny to cry out as Billy had heard.
Mike had just given Nanny another and an extra hard cut with the whip, when Billy recognized Nanny and with a bound he was at her side leaving the fireman behind him and upsetting Mike in his mad haste to get to Nanny.
When Mike regained his feet he came at Billy with the butt of his whip raised to strike him, but before he did so, he recognized Billy as his long-lost goat, and was going to make up with him and hitch him to the cart to help Nanny draw it, when Billy made a plunge at him and sent him sprawling into the street. Then he butted the cart over and spilled the milk and told Nanny to turn around and run toward home and he would keep Mike off.
Nanny did as she was told and soon the harness broke and let her loose from the overturned cart. By this time Mike was on his feet again, furious and mad enough at Billy to kill him had he caught him, but with a kick of his heels in the air Billy and Nanny had left him and were running away as fast as they could while the firemen and the crowd stood still and watched.
Mike ran until he was all out of breath and in turning a corner sharply he ran into another boy coming in the opposite direction. This made the boy mad and he struck at Mike hitting him in the jaw. That was too much for Mike who was already angry at being outwitted by the goats, so he pitched into the boy and they fought until both had black eyes and bloody noses and a policeman coming up at that time arrested them both for disorderly conduct. While all this was happening the goats had made good their escape.
hen next we see Billy, he and Nanny are lying peacefully in the moonlight fast asleep. After running away from Mike, Nanny showed Billy the way into the country, for she knew the road well, as she had had to draw a can of milk to town every morning.
When they were once out of town Billy said:
"Now, Nanny, we must find a nice meadow somewhere in which we can get some grass to eat and water to drink and then you must tell me all that has happened since last I saw you. But first we must get as far away from the road Mike will have to take to get home as we can, or he will find us."
So they turned off at the first cross-road they came to and hurried on until they found the fine, green pasture where we now see them.
The next day they were in this same pasture enjoying themselves when they saw some boys coming toward them. At first they thought the boys were looking for them; but soon discovered from their conversation that the boys were going swimming in a little lake at the end of the meadow near the woods. They passed close by the goats without paying any attention to them.
One boy had a bag of pop-corn he was eating and Billy smelling it commenced to long for some. The firemen had bought salted and buttered pop-corn for him every day, and the smell of this made him hungry and he determined to get the bag from the boy.
"But how can you, Billy?" asked Nanny, when he told her he was going to get the pop-corn.
"I'll tell you; when they leave their clothes on the bank and go in swimming I will steal up and eat what is left in the bag, and anything else I find in their pockets."
"How are you going to get anything out of their pockets without hands?"
"Why, I will eat pocket and all if I smell anything in there I like," answered Billy.
"Billy Whiskers, you are the most determined goat I ever heard of," said Nanny. "If you want anything you are going to have it, no matter how you have to get it."
"I guess you are right, Nan. But if you had ever tasted salted and buttered pop-corn you, too, would have it if you had to hook all five of those boys into the lake to get it. Come along, and we will go over near the lake so when they go into the water we can go through their clothes and I will give you your first taste of a town delicacy in the shape of pop-corn."
Billy and Nanny soon arrived at the bank of the lake where the boys had gone in swimming, and behind a clump of bushes they found the boys' clothes.
Billy lost no time in smelling out the bag of pop-corn but alas! when found, it was empty. Billy's disappointment knew no bounds and he began to vent his spleen on the clothes that were lying around by hooking and stamping on them. When throwing a coat up in the air on his horns two nice red apples rolled out of one of the pockets. After eating one of these and allowing Nanny to eat the other, he felt a little less angry and commenced to smell around for something else equally as good.
All this time they could hear the boys shouting and splashing in the water, oblivious of the mischief that was being done to their clothes, for they could not see the goats through the bushes.
"Oh, Billy, come here!" called Nanny, "and see what I have found. It smells awfully good but I don't know what it can be."
Billy went and after smelling the coat pronounced the good smell to come from a piece of gingerbread in one of the pockets.
"How do you know?" asked Nanny.
"Well, I guess if you had eaten as many pieces of gingerbread as I have you would not forget the name. When I lived at Mr. Wagner's, his boys used to give it to me often."
But the trouble was to get it out of the pocket now that it was found. Billy threw the coat up in the air, shook it in his mouth and did everything else he could think of, but the gingerbread would not fall out, so when the coat turned wrong side out and the pocket lay exposed he ate pocket and all, forgetting to save any for Nanny.
"Oh, Nanny, forgive me, I forgot to give you some and you found it, but don't care for it did not taste very good and I felt something hard go down my throat and I think I must have swallowed a jack-knife also.
"Here is something good, Nanny. A white shirt with starched cuffs. You take one sleeve and I will take the other and I know you will like the starchy taste."
The goats were standing there each chewing on a cuff when they heard the boys coming and it happened that they both heard the noise at the same time, but turned to run in opposite directions which tore the shirt from top to bottom and when the boys first saw the goats they were scampering off with a piece of shirt waving from their mouths.
The boys started after them but the rough ground the goats were running over hurt the boys' feet so they had to give up and content themselves with throwing stones at the two runaways.
When the boys went to see what damage had been done they found one boy minus a pair of trousers, another a shirt and all the rest had lost their collars and cuffs to say nothing of the pockets that were missing.
But the boy whose trousers were gone was in the worst fix, as the others could go home without any collars and the boy minus a shirt could button his coat up tight to his neck and no one would know he had no shirt on. But alas for the trouserless boy! What was he to do? At last they hit on a plan. He was to take one of the boys' coats and stick his legs in the sleeves and button the coat tightly in front and tie it on round his waist with a string. This he did, but when he had to walk he could only take the very shortest of steps. This, with the comical picture he made, sent the boys into peals of laughter, and they rolled on the ground and held their sides for pain from laughing when he stubbed his toe and fell head over heels, or when he tried to climb a fence.
fter leaving the boys the two goats trotted on and soon came out on the other side of the wood and saw before them a beautiful valley. Grazing peacefully beside a little brook that ran through it, they saw a herd of goats. And at the upper end of the valley beyond them they saw a large old-fashioned farmhouse with its stables and outhouses.
"Nan, let us go down and introduce ourselves to the head goat of the flock and see if they won't let us stay with them for awhile. There are so many of them that the farmer won't notice us among them when he drives them into the stable to-night, and it will be a good place for us to stay until Mike stops hunting for us, for I know he won't give us up in a hurry and is probably looking for us now, and I don't propose to live with such a common family as Mike belongs to, for until now I have only lived with first-class families."
Nanny agreed to join the goats so the two trotted down the hill bleating as they ran to attract the attention of the other goats. The goats soon heard them, stopped eating and looked up, and when Billy and Nanny were within speaking distance the leader of the goats, a large black fellow, walked out to meet them.
Billy introduced himself and then Nanny to the old goat who in return told them his name was Satan and that
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