Billy was so interested that he walked straight up to it and stuck his nose against the glass case, for what puzzled him most was how the water got in the tub when he had seen no one pour it in, and he knew the water nearest at hand was away down in the pond at the foot of the hill.
As for Button, he stretched his neck so far over the top of the cupboard that he nearly toppled off, and Stubby barked in his surprise and kept jumping in and out of the basket. In fact, he was so nervous he did not know what he was doing.
Swish! Swish! Swish! went the water, becoming all foamy and white.
As Button gazed, the machine stopped and the water grew still. Then all of a sudden it began to swish around again, though no person was near it. The person nearest the machine was a man standing by the wall, his finger on a little black button in the wall, while next him stood Hilda, clapping her hands in delight. You see, she did the washing.
“Now it will be only child’s play to do the washing, even though we do have big tablecloths and sheets,” she said.
They were all leaving the laundry and Billy was about to go too, when he found himself all tangled up with the tube that let the water into the tub and the electric wires that furnished the power to run the machine. The first thing he knew he felt prickles running all over him, and then a queer, jerky feeling as if someone were pulling all the muscles in his body the wrong way,—and that is the last he knew for a long time. Billy had suffered a shock that knocked him over and made him unconscious!
When Mr. Watson turned to see why Billy did not come, and discovered him stretched on the floor as if dead, he knew not what to think until he saw the detached wires. Then he knew Billy had suffered a shock of electricity. The men jumped off the wagon and with the help they gave, Mr. Watson and Hiram soon had Billy all right once more.
“Mr. Watson, you need not worry. He is not killed for the current in these machines is not strong enough to hurt anyone, much less kill them,” said one of the men.
That very evening when Billy, his family, Stubby and Button and a few friends were resting by the straw stack, they wished to hear from Billy’s own lips how a shock of electricity felt. He told them: “You haven’t any idea what a peculiar sensation it is. At first I felt all prickly, as if someone was sticking me full of needles and pins. Then all my muscles began to double up, and that is the last I knew about until I found myself on the grass outside the laundry with Mr. Watson and the men working over me. Not a pleasant sensation at all. I hope, I assure you, that Hilda never has one. It would almost kill her if she did.”