“This is really the first time I’ve dared to peck him,” she mused, “and now that I have so good an opportunity, I shall repay him for a few things he’s done to my kith and kin. He mustn’t think he can go scot-free for all his naughtiness. Don’t I remember the chase he used to give my poor mother and her flock of little downy children, and how tired our poor wobbly legs would be ere we could gain the shelter under the barn? All that saved us then was the fact that it was so low he could not crawl underneath. This is the first time I’ve ever really enjoyed my friendship with him, and I mean to make up for lost time,”—Toppy meditated.
“Here, you imp,” thought Billy, for she was giving him a peck here and a vicious dab there, and the henpecked goat was really getting much the worst of the bargain, for he could not make protest—his jaws were still out of commission. So he perforce swallowed his wrath and submitted meekly to the process.
“Billy,” commenced Toppy, “you are always and forever getting into some mix-up like this, and always appealing to your friends for aid. But you are such a close-mouthed creature no one ever knows the real truth about your mischief making. I think in slight return for this service of mine you really owe it to me to tell how this happened.”
Instead of replying, he shook his head, though not so much from a desire to keep his adventure a state secret as from the fact that that dreadful stuff wouldn’t let him speak. He hung his head, the while Toppy was busily engaged in cleaning his coat.
“I’m not quite so close-mouthed as some people think. If only I could talk, I’d surely do so, though there have been occasions when I’d not breathe a word of an escapade like this.”
He gave one appealing look at Toppy, and in his surprise to see her eating away as she worked, he gave a gasp and then a bigger one for to his inexpressible joy and relief he could open his mouth! The taffy had slowly but surely melted, and he was able to eat and talk and laugh once more.
CHAPTER XII
THE PUMPKIN MAN
NO sooner did Billy make this glad discovery than he straightway forgot his benefactress, and trotted off, leaving her perched there on the hay stack, deploring his lack of gratitude.
“Just like my husband, Coxy. You can work and work and work for him, and just so soon as he is fine and dandy, off he struts to make friends with some vain young pullet,” and she snuggled down in the hay, much too grieved to venture out and explore the surrounding territory.