“I remember seeing some hay in a barn over near the grandstand, and I will make that serve as my couch,” he was planning when his further progress was checked for a moment by a crowd surrounding a haranguing fakir. Billy was impatient at this delay, and fretted and fumed.
“Some people lose every vestige of good manners the moment they’re one of a crowd,” he grumbled, but a second later and he, too, was guilty of this very thing, and was just as eager to push his way to the front as any of the people whom he had been berating. No thought of sleep now troubled him; no thought of politeness, either, judging by the reckless way he was forging ahead.
What was it that worked this sudden change? Let us accompany Billy as he wriggles and squirms and wriggles again, steadily pushing his way forward, for there in the center of the group is a very queer looking individual.
He is taller than most men, but this may be because his head is swathed in a high turban, the gayly colored cloth being wound around and around his head in soft, voluminous folds, underneath which peers out a typical Oriental face with snapping dark eyes, and teeth gleaming like ivory, while a crafty smile plays about his thin lips.
He carries an enormous pen holder, fully two inches in diameter and eighteen inches long. He has just explained how he is able to do wondrous things with the Magic Pen, as he calls it, and is now screwing it together, having shown the bystanders that it is merely a hollow tube, with nothing concealed in it, yet possessed of wonderful power.
As he distributes sheets of paper and pencils among his listeners, he cries:
“Write your initials plainly. Then the Magic Pen will tell your fortune. It will reveal your past, and it will foretell your future. The Magic Pen sees all. The Magic Pen knows all. Sign your initials! Sign, sign, sign!”
As he passes the paper, he catches sight of Billy, and laughingly bestows on him paper and pencil, much to the merriment of the crowd.
“They are making fun of me, that much I know. Well, we’ll retaliate,” and with that Billy begins to trace his initials, holding the pencil in his mouth, and using one foot to hold the paper on the ground. To be sure, they are crude and look like a beginner’s, for goats are not skilled in penmanship, and Billy, though much more highly educated than most of his kind, would never have picked up so much of the art had it not been for the kindness and inexhaustible patience of Smart Jim, the educated horse traveling with the Circus. He had devoted long hours to teaching Billy, with the result that he is now able to write the two letters rather creditably.