Billy Whiskers at the Fair

by Frances Trego Montgomery

But the nimble Duke was ready for a frolic, and cleared Billy’s back as neatly as most boys do when playing leap-frog.

Over and over Billy charged, but each time Duke escaped by using the light leap. They were in the very midst of the fun, and had forgotten all about the dreaded morning visit of the keeper, when the rattle of a key in the padlock gave warning. Billy heard—and instantly Billy knew what it meant. In pure self-defence, to escape sure capture and tedious imprisonment, the goat backed to the farther corner and quickly made ready.

Back swung the gate and in came a tall, slender youth. Billy felt a qualm or two about his real right to attack so delicate a boy, but when he saw the lad take a glance around and quickly turn to flee at sight of a goat cornered as he was, he decided such cowardly action deserved a drubbing, and with a bound he took the fellow just below the knees. His joints worked beautifully, Billy thought, for he collapsed in a heap on Billy’s broad back, and his long arms flew out for some support, and his longer legs first dangled on the ground and then flailed the air, conforming to every motion of the beast beneath him.

“Ouch! Ouch!” groaned Billy, after having made several uneven leaps and bounds, the better to show his rider the advantage of a goat over all other steeds.

“Ouch! Ouch! He’s holding on by my coat! He’s pulling my hair out by its very roots. He has no humanity—not a bit!” wailed Billy.

That the tables were merely turned had not occurred to Billy, nor the fact that he was receiving only a fraction of the discomfort he was giving.

“I’ll not stand it! I’ll not have it! Ouch! Ouch! He’s caught my tail, he has! Ouch!”

Billy was mad. Not angry, but furiously mad. And gathering all his strength, he made one high backward leap, turned a complete somersault, and his victim described a circle, too, landing in a deep mud puddle, left by the storm of the day before.

The fellow had no more than realized what had befallen him than Billy was upon his feet and charging at him. That he had chosen a muddy seat seemed no very great disadvantage to Billy. In fact, he now determined to give him a mud bath, and first he prodded him on one side and then on the other. All the fight the fellow ever possessed had fled when he saw that magnificent pair of horns bearing down on him. He screened his eyes with his hands and gave himself up to the tender mercies of the enemy, rolling this way and that at Billy’s pleasure.