“Oh, Gusta, quick! I smell something burning,” cried Ned. “It must be more cookies.”
Horrors! When she reached the oven door and opened it, a cloud of black smoke rushed out and when she carried her pan of cookies over to the table she saw at a glance they were burned to a crisp.
“Here, Ned, take them out and throw them in the swill pail,” she said.
This the boy did, and presently Augusta, Ned and Joe had the pleasure of seeing a big white goat dancing around like mad. Billy had gone to the pail to eat the discarded cookies, and not knowing they were so hot, had taken two, one of which stuck to the roof of his mouth, burning him dreadfully and causing him to dance with the pain.
“There is your cookie thief, Gusta! You better go after him with your broom,” said Ned.
Augusta grabbed the broom and rushed toward Billy, but Billy was in no mood to be reproved in this manner, so when she was near him he surprised her by butting her right over his head, and she landed in the horse’s drinking trough with a great splash. The boys, enjoying all this, began to throw the eggs from their basket at Billy. Of course when they hit him they broke and the yellow yolks ran all over his nice white coat. This angered him and he ran toward the house to butt the boys, but they leaped inside the door and shut it, throwing more eggs at him from the safety of the window.
Just now Mrs. Goodrich entered the kitchen and seeing the boys throwing eggs from the basket, exclaimed, “Boys, boys! What are you doing? What do you mean by throwing nice fresh eggs at something?”
“Oh, we forgot they were eggs! We were throwing them at a big, cross white goat outside. He has just butted Gusta into the watering trough, and we were trying to chase him away. Here he comes up the steps now!”
Bing, bing, bangety-bing! Two hard butts in quick succession on the kitchen door. As it was not tightly closed, it flew open and in came Billy, looking for his tormentors. One dove under the table, the other stepped up on the table right on top of the cookies, while Mrs. Goodrich plunged into the dining room and barricaded the door by pushing the dining table against it and piling the chairs on top of it.