Yes, up the street went Rags Habakuk. And soon as he left home something happened. Standing on his right shoulder was a blue rat and standing on his left shoulder was a blue rat. The only way he knew they were there was by looking at them.
There they were, close to his ears. He could feel the far edge of their whiskers against his ears.
“This never happened to me before all the time I been picking rags,” he said. “Two blue rats stand by my ears and never say anything even if they know I am listening to anything they tell me.”
So Rags Habakuk walked on two blocks, three blocks, four blocks, squinting with his right eye slanting at the blue rat on his right shoulder and squinting with his left eye slanting at the blue rat on his left shoulder.
“If I stood on somebody’s shoulder with my whiskers right up in somebody’s ear I would say something for somebody to listen to,” he muttered.
Of course, he did not understand it was the gold buckskin whincher and the power working. Down in the pocket of the vest he had on, the gold buckskin whincher power was saying, “Because you have two K’s in your name you must have two blue rats on your shoulders, one blue rat for your right ear, one blue rat for your left ear.”
It was good business. Never before did Rags Habakuk get so much old rags.
“Come again—you and your lucky blue rats,” people said to him. They dug into their cellars and garrets and brought him bottles and bones and copper and brass and old shoes and old clothes, coats, pants, vests.
Every morning when he went up the street with the two blue rats on his shoulders, blinking their eyes straight ahead and chewing their whiskers so they sometimes tickled the ears of old Rags Habakuk, sometimes women came running out on the front porch to look at him and say, “Well, if he isn’t a queer old mysterious ragman and if those ain’t queer old mysterious blue rats!”
All the time the gold buckskin whincher and the power was working. It was saying, “So long as old Rags Habakuk keeps the two blue rats he shall have good luck—but if he ever sells one of the blue rats then one of his daughters shall marry a taxicab driver—and if he ever sells the other blue rat then his other daughter shall marry a moving-picture hero actor.”