Billy Whiskers at the Circus

by Frances Trego Montgomery

From this you can see what sort of a boy Jack was.

Billy Whiskers, who was standing near by at the time, smiled to himself for only the day before he had both seen and heard Jack Wright, who was now talking so bravely, spanked for going in swimming after his mother had told him he mustn’t because the water was too cold and likely to make him sick. Jack hadn’t acted then as though it didn’t hurt. In fact, it had hurt so much and made him so mad that he had almost decided to run away from home and join the gipsies who were then camping at the river not far away.

But he hadn’t gone after all and was now waiting for his friend Tom to tell him more about the Circus. It made him almost sick when he thought that very likely his mother might, as further punishment for his disobedience, not only not let him go to the big Show but put him to catching potato bugs instead. “If she does,” thought wicked Jack, “I certainly will run away and never come back.” He got some consolation out of imagining how much they would miss him.

While he was planning this revenge, Tom was talking as fast as he could and his stories were all the time getting bigger and bigger. By that time he said that the elephant was as big as the corn barn, that the giraffe was as tall as the old oak, that the boa-constrictor could swallow Jeff, the hired man—he wished in his heart he would, for Jeff had told his father that Tom had made a mighty poor job of hoeing corn the day before—that there were bears and tigers, lions and hyenas, wolves and wild-cats, ostriches and eagles, and everything else. He then began to talk about clowns and beautiful lady horseback riders, Arabian steeds and the wonderful doings of the trapeze performers.

All the time Billy Whiskers was listening with might and main. He had never in all his eventful life been to a circus, didn’t know what it was, hadn’t even heard of such a thing before.

The stories Tom Treat was telling Jack Wright excited him and the first he knew he had forgotten all about his resolve to never run away again and had fully made up his mind that come what might and cost what it would, he, Billy Whiskers, goat, would attend the Circus at Springfield.

CHAPTER II
MAKING PREPARATIONS

BILLY WHISKERS had more than a week in which to make his preparations to go to the Circus. The morning after he had heard Tom Treat, his young master, telling Jack Wright about it, he almost decided to give up going.

In the first place he didn’t know what might happen to him, and more than once the thought entered his mind that he would be running into all sorts of danger. You see that Billy was no greenhorn. He had knocked about a great deal and had been in some awful tight places. There had even been times when it looked as though he must pay for some of his escapades with his very life. Those of you who have known him before this remember his adventures in the Rocky Mountains and in Old Mexico, and how he was once lost overboard in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Well, all of these things tended to make him cautious, so that while he had been quick to make up his mind to see for himself this wonderful Circus, he did not finally start on the trip until he had thought it all over very carefully and counted, as he supposed, the cost. Whether he had or not we shall see as we go on.