Billy Whiskers in France

by Frances Trego Montgomery

WHILE Billy had been relating his adventures Button had been lying in a box under Stubby’s window, trying to think of a way to get to him and tell him that Billy was here in this very place.

“If there was only a fire escape!” he sighed. “Then I could easily make it.”

It was getting near supper time but he was still puzzling his brain over the matter when he saw one of the nurses in Stubby’s room come to the window and let down a rope with a basket on it. When it reached the ground she still stood there holding on to the rope as if waiting for some one to come.

“What in the world can be going on now, I wonder,” mused Button.

Presently from around the corner of the hospital from the kitchen he saw another nurse appear with a tray loaded down with the dogs’ supper. There not being an elevator in this old building, the nurses had thought out this way of saving them climbing the long flight of steps with the heavy trays on which they carried the dogs’ food to them. One nurse would go to the kitchen, get the food prepared by the cook, and then bring it around to this window, place it in the basket, and the nurse in the window would pull it up. When the dogs had finished their meal, the dishes were lowered in the basket just as they had been hauled up, carried back to the kitchen and washed. So you see what a saving of steps this basket elevator really was.

“My, if I could only manage to get in that basket and have her pull me up!” thought Button.

The cat watched the nurses raise and lower the basket until presently a nurse came from the kitchen, put the food in the basket and went off, forgetting to pull a string which rang a bell, the signal that the basket was ready to be pulled up.

“Gee, she has forgotten to pull the string and gone off. I can see the nurse in the window waiting for the signal. She will get tired waiting pretty soon and pull it up, I believe. I am going over and eat up what is in that basket and hop in myself, and then I shall be pulled up. If the basket feels heavy, the nurse will think there must be an extra amount of dishes in this trip.”

Suiting the action to the thought, Button hurried over to it, lapped up a cup of milk, ate some cold chicken and potatoes, and then he saw the basket begin to move. Without a moment’s hesitation he jumped in and sat on the soiled dishes and the remaining suppers. Up, up he was slowly drawn, and he heard the nurse mumble to herself, “Wonder what they have in this basket to-night? It feels like a basket of bricks, it is so heavy.”