Billy Whiskers | Page 4

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.
[Illustration]

Billy at the Soda Fountain
After 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