“Vell, vell, I’ll pay, I’ll pay! Dis rain it is so wery wet, or I spend not one cent mit you!”
She lifted her full petticoat, groped about for the hidden pocket and gingerly produced the second nickle.
The two had been so much interested in their haggling over the admission fee that Billy was unnoticed as he crept stealthily around the German woman, scarcely breathing, so anxious was he to gain entrance. Now that he was effectively shielded from the doorkeeper’s view by her voluminous skirts, he scurried on ahead.
“This is very queer. I thought we were in a large building. But this seems to twist and turn and twist in a most bewildering and aggravating manner,” thought Billy, as he pushed rapidly forward through a narrow hallway. “I begin to think Mrs. Treat’s saying that ‘Things are not always what they seem,’ is pretty true.—Oh, me, what is this?”
Billy was treading on something that swayed and rolled and pitched beneath him like the billows of an angry, boisterous sea and, indeed, he felt much like an inexperienced sailor on his maiden voyage who has not yet found his sea legs.
“I—I—don’t like—this—buffeting. Wish—I was—well—out of—this! My stomach feels—too—shaky—for—comfort,” and in his eagerness to secure a stable footing, he made for the wall, lifting his fore feet very high and planting them very carefully and very, very firmly, trying to feel his way in the midnight blackness. At last he found the wall, or at least what he judged to be the wall, but it swayed away from him as he leaned against it for support, and the pitching and rolling and tumbling grew worse minute by minute.
“A most provoking place, and I don’t see why anyone would pay a dime to get into such a fix!” he mumbled. “Wonder where the old lady is, and how she is enjoying her sea voyage. This is worse than crossing the stormy Atlantic.”
Standing still brought no relief, and so Billy determined to forge ahead, and he resumed his perilous journey with a few excited bleats. Frightened cries from the front and rear followed. Billy repeated his bleating, and wilder grew the commotion.
“It is dark as a dungeon in here, or else I would certainly face about and make for outdoors in double quick time. But as it is, I must go on. If I collided with anyone, it might prove the undoing of both of us, and I for one am not yet ready to end my career. I’ve just enough ginger left in me to want to see what lies at the end of all this.”
“Come to think of it, this must be the ‘unusual experience’ foretold by the Magic Pen,” and Billy’s legs began to shake and his chin whiskers to tremble at fear of the unknown.