Billy Whiskers' Adventures Part 13

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They were too spry for him, however, and when he drove them out of one bed they simply ran into another and stood eating until he was again within striking distance of them. Then they would scamper away and begin on another bed. They did this until the man was so angry that his face was as red as a turkey c.o.c.k's, while his breath came in gasps. At last he tripped over the hose and fell sprawling in a puddle of water. This, however, gave him an idea, and he determined to turn the water on the kids. Up he got and without looking to see if they were still there, he turned the hose where they had stood but a second before. But alas! the stream of water hit his best girl who was walking between two of the flower beds pushing a baby carriage. The kids were nowhere in sight!

"Oh, Rosy, Rosy, forgive me, forgive me! I thought you was a goat!"

"So I look like a goat, do I, you miserable old clumsy fellow, you!

Take that--and that--and that!" as she struck him over the head with one of the baby pillows, and then began to cry. Blinded by her tears, she pushed the baby carriage right over the flower beds, heedless of where she was walking, sobbing, "He thought I was a goat! I don't look like a goat, I don't! Boo hoo hoo!"

By this time the gardener had collected his wits enough to go to her and explain. The last the kids saw of them as they bounded away, he had his arm around her and was loving her, much to the amus.e.m.e.nt of pa.s.sersby.

"I smell something good," said one of the Twins.

"So do I! Let's go see what it is."

"It comes from over by that big red brick building."

They trotted over and found it came from a popcorn wagon.

"Yum, yum! It is popcorn with b.u.t.ter and salt on it!"

"Oh, I just love it, don't you?"

"Yes, but I like it best with chocolate on it. Wait until the man who owns the stand is not looking and then we will run up and grab a bag."

"I know a safer plan. Here come two little girls with bags in their hands. One has a bag with b.u.t.tered corn in it and the other has one with chocolate poured over the corn. I saw the man fixing it for them.

We will hide behind these bushes and when they are opposite us we will jump out, grab the bags and run. Which girl do you think has the b.u.t.tered corn and which the chocolate?"

"The girl with the pink bow has the b.u.t.tered corn, so you take her bag, while I go for the other one."

"Oh, oh! You horrid things! Where did you come from?" wailed one little girl when the kids jumped out of the shrubbery at her and grabbed her bag of chocolate popcorn.

The other little girl held onto her bag and began to run, holding it high above her head, but she squeezed the bag so tightly that it broke and the corn scattered on the ground. Then the kid quickly gathered up a great mouthful and ran off.

The little girl went wailing to a park policeman and told him her troubles and the kids saw him turn and run toward them. They raced off, chewing the paper bags as they ran, seeking a good place to hide, which they found in a thick clump of lilac bushes. After devouring the very last bit of paper that had either b.u.t.ter or chocolate sticking to it, they fell asleep. And here they were found by the night watchman who carried them off and shut them in a pen with some Angora goats from across the sea.

CHAPTER XV

THE ELEPHANTS ARE ENRAGED AT THE GOATS

Billy Junior, Daisy and Nannie visited the cages of all the animals, and gave no more thought to the runaway Twins until hour after hour went by and the Twins did not come back. Neither had they seen them playing in the Park and Daisy began to grow nervous about them. At last she said to her husband,

"Billy, I can't stand this suspense any longer. I am beginning to fear that something has happened to the Twins. You know they might have wandered over to the lake and been drowned. You and Nannie may go on calling on the different animals, but I am going to hunt for the kids."

"You are quite right," said Nannie. "I have been uneasy about them for some time, but did not like to mention it for fear of alarming you. We will go with you and help hunt for them."

"Yes," agreed Billy Junior, "it is high time we were finding them.

There is no knowing what they might do, they are so daring and mischievous. We'll outline a systematic plan for the hunt. Each one will go in a different direction and scour all the paths in that section of the Park, looking around every cage that we see. Then when the clock strikes twelve we will meet in front of the yard where the elephants are kept."

Billy Junior went to the south, Nannie to the east and Daisy to the north.

Every step Daisy took, she grew more worried, and when she pa.s.sed a cage of ferocious tigers and panthers who she knew lived on kid meat, she shivered to think that perhaps they were licking their chops because they had just finished eating one of her darlings who in some way might have squeezed between the iron bars of their cage.

On, on she went, her knees knocking together from fear and fatigue, when she thought she heard their voices calling, "Mamma! Mamma!"

She hastened in the direction from which the sound came and there, sure enough, shut up in a yard with other goats she saw her two darling babies. There was no mistaking them as they were the handsomest kids you ever saw, one being white as snow like Daisy and the other black as night like its father, Billy Junior.

"Oh, my darlings, my darlings!" she called when she saw them, and both kids came running to the fence to be kissed on the ends of their saucy little noses which they stuck through the bars of the iron fence.

"Where have you been and how does it come you are shut up here?"

"Oh, mamma, get us out for we are afraid of that big, horrid black goat over there with the great horns. He said if we did not stop calling for you, he would hook us over the moon with his big horn."

"Who said they would hook you?" asked Billy Junior, who had just come up to the fence with Nannie.

"That old fellow over there asleep by the house," said one Twin.

"I should like to see him try to do it. If he did, he would see himself flying over the moon," said Billy angrily.

While the goats had been talking to the kids, several men with rakes and pitchforks in their hands had come up behind them and formed in a semicircle. Hearing a crunching of the gravel on the walk behind him, Billy looked around and knew in a second that they were trapped. There was no use of trying to fight men armed with pitchforks, so when they began to drive them toward an open gate that led into the pen where the kids were, Daisy, Nannie and Billy Junior showed no fight, but went quietly as lambs. After the men had left, Billy Junior said,

"Well, this is a pretty how-de-do! Here we are locked up and father coming to see us after being away two years. Now we can't greet him except through the bars of a fence! It really is too bad. We should have had sense enough to leave the kids at home, knowing as we do how mischievous they are."

They were shut in this pen three days and were growing heartily sick of the monotony of walking around their small yard in the daytime and being shut in a stuffy little room at night with the other goats who paid little attention to them.

"If that fence were not so very high, I could jump it," said Billy Junior. "But should I try and fail, I might fall back on the long, sharp spikes and hang there."

"Or if only the bars were not so close together, we would starve ourselves and squeeze through," remarked Daisy.

"Or dig under," suggested Nannie, "if the bars did not go down into the ground so far."

"Oh my, oh my, oh me! Isn't this life awful, with nothing to do but wander around this old yard where the gra.s.s is all tramped down and burnt by the hot sun, with people walking by and looking at you all the time? Only an occasional kind-hearted person gives you a peanut or the core of an apple," grumbled Billy Junior.

"I wish your father were here," said Nannie. "When everything looked hopeless, he always found a way out."

"So do we wish he was here," chimed in Daisy and Billy Junior.

"Mercy sakes alive!" exclaimed Daisy the next moment. "See where those kids are! In the elephant yard!" and she jumped to her feet and ran to the fence which separated the yard where the goats were confined from that of the elephants. "How did you two get over there?" she asked severely. "Come straight out of that yard! The elephants may not like kids and kill you."

"You are perfectly correct, madame," said an elephant. "I dislike goats of all kinds, and so would you if in my place. Forced to live month in and month out next to a goat pen where the disagreeable odor all goats have is carried to my nostrils until I am sick from it and cannot eat is far from pleasant."

"Did I hear you say," said Billy Junior, stepping up beside his wife, "that you do not like the smell of goats?"

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"That is exactly what I _did_ say," replied the elephant. "And I will repeat it if you wish me to do so."