Billy Whiskers Out for Fun

by Frances Trego Montgomery

“But how am I to get out?” said the puppy. “I am so fat that I had to squeeze through the window and then fall in, but I can’t jump up.”

“You are about the color of potatoes,” said Stubby. “Get in the darkest part of the bin, keep your eyes closed and your head between your paws and you will look like an old piece of carpet or a fuzzy mat. But on your life don’t open your eyes! They will shine in the darkness and give you away. Now hurry and crawl down and I will roll a lot of potatoes on you.”

“Hark! I hear someone coming. I must go!” and Stubby hunched himself, jumped through the window and joined the others just as three men armed with revolvers, pokers and canes, carrying lamps and candles high over their heads, entered the cellar. The puppy could hear them but he did not move and he kept his eyes shut and his head between his fore paws. He could hear them rummaging between boxes and barrels and talking all the time. They loudly ordered the burglar or whoever was there to come out and give himself up before they found him and beat him to a jelly. “If you come out and give yourself up, we won’t beat you,” they promised.

At that moment one of them stepped on a board and it flew up and hit him on the shins. This noise made the man with the lamp jump and he hit the chimney on a hanging shelf which knocked it crooked. To straighten it he put it down on the packing box Billy was hiding behind. But horrors! what was that he heard? Just like someone breathing, and at that moment he spied two big eyes looking at him. He dropped the lamp into the box and it would soon have set fire to the house as it was full of old papers, had not Billy, in his endeavors to save himself, upset the box. This turned its contents on the flames and put them out, while Billy ran across the cellar and jumped out the window.

In his haste to escape he ran into one of the other men, knocked him over and out went the candle. The remaining man stepped in the spilt milk and fell in front of the two whose lights had gone out. There all three lay in a heap on the floor imagining the burglars were after them. At this moment someone opened the cellar door and let in a flood of light. Seeing three men on the floor with their legs and arms flying, they thought it was a fight, so shut the door, bolted it and ran for help.

When Nannie saw the men fighting and Billy jumping out the window, she left her hiding-place and started to follow Billy. But alas! in her hurry she did not see a tub of cucumber pickles and she fell head first into it. She stepped out with brine dripping from her hair into her eyes and a lot of little pickles strung on her horns. When Billy saw her, he rolled on the grass with laughter.

“The fool!” exclaimed one of the men on the floor. “Why didn’t she leave that door open so we could see?”

At last they untangled themselves and got up and tried to find the stairs in the dark. Having no matches, they could not relight their candles. The only ray of light in the whole cellar was a faint gleam from the window over the potato bin. One man went toward it, hoping to find it large enough to crawl through, but when he was within a few feet of the bin, he thought he heard someone breathing. He listened. Yes, it was surely a person breathing regularly. This frightened him until his legs trembled under him and he tried to run but they wobbled so he could not. He tried to call to the other men but his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth and he could not make a sound. While this was happening, another man had started for the window and in groping his way toward it he touched the frightened man who was standing still in the dark. He turned to run he knew not where, but just as far as he could get from the man he had touched. In his hurry he did not heed where he was going. The next thing he knew he stubbed his toe and he too fell headlong into the tub of pickles.

By this time more men appeared at the head of the stairs and came down into the cellar with a lantern. They searched and searched but all they found was the three frightened men and a little old woolly mat in the potato bin. So they left the cellar, some arguing there was no burglar there, while the others argued there was. What could sneeze and breathe and feel like flesh and blood? The last the puppy heard of them they were calling one another cowards and fools, as they slammed the cellar door. But he heard one man say: “I thought I came to a wedding, but I seem to have come to a bull fight and a burglar chase! Goodness knows what else will take place before they are really married!”