Billy Whiskers Out for Fun

by Frances Trego Montgomery

Button followed him for a way, then he spied the dairy building to his left and made a bee line for it. When he reached the door, he found two dairy maids standing in the open door talking, and they were so excited over what they were saying that he sneaked in right beside them and was lapping the cream first from one pan and then from another. All of a sudden one of them turned round and seeing Button, she gave such an outlandish scream that it startled him and he fell headlong into the pan. In a minute he came out dripping, cream streaming into his eyes so he could not see. In his endeavor to get away, he fell into another as there were several pans cooling in a vat of ice-water. One of the maids grabbed up a broom and came for him. He jumped straight toward her and as she dodged him she slipped and fell into the vat of cold, cold water, upsetting every pan in the vat. Button landed on the floor and the jar shook the thick cream from his eyes so he could see. And you just better believe it did not take him long to escape. He had his fill of cream for once.

On his way to the fat cattle, Billy chanced to pass a pastry show and the delicious odor of hot molasses cakes floated to his nostrils through the open door.

“Oh my! Don’t those cookies smell good? I shall just have to have some for I haven’t had any old-fashioned molasses cookies for ages and I adore them. I also smell pumpkin pie which I like just as well. Guess I’ll just tarry here a while and eat some. Think they would taste better than corn or oats at this particular time. How I wish Nannie was not so timid! Then she would be here so she could get some, for I know she adores molasses cookies. If that big fat cook doesn’t stop standing in that doorway wasting his time, I shall have to butt him out while I go in and eat what I want. There, he is moving, and I smell something burning. Serves him right when he neglects them and wastes his master’s time and money standing at the door instead of attending to business. But ‘It is an ill wind that blows nobody any good’ for now he will be so busy looking after his things that he won’t see me helping myself.”

When Billy arrived at the front door, the cook was disappearing out the back door with the pan of burned cookies, mumbling to himself:

“Gott in Himmel! See what happens to me when I just step to the door for one breath of air! My Gott! My Gott! Mr. Swabenbach will kill me for wasting his butter und eggs und sugar und flour.”

“Yes, and he will feel like beating you to a jelly when he sees what has happened to his pies, for I have already tasted four different kinds,” thought Stubby.

Just then the cook returned, still muttering to himself. But when he saw Billy up on a table eating a pie and several others ruined by being trampled upon he nearly fell backward in alarm. Then with a roar like a bull he started for Billy, throwing his empty cookie pan at him. He threw it so hard that when it hit Billy’s sharp horns, they made two holes in it and it stuck to Billy’s head and slipped half over one eye. Billy immediately jumped to the floor, hitting the pan a bang on the side of the table and completely covering one eye. This made Billy angry and when he saw the cook approaching him with a long-handled soup boiler in his hand, Billy turned and, running between the short fat legs of the cook, he upset him, sending hot soup all over him, for it turned upside down on his head and spilled carrots, turnips and potatoes all over him. Billy ran out the back door and jumped a fence which brought him into a chicken yard. As he went over, the cookie pan on his head hit the fence in just such a way that it knocked it off his horns, much to Billy’s delight.

His arrival in the chicken yard caused a fresh commotion as it surprised the fowls so they flew in all directions and set up a loud cackling which brought the owner to see what was the matter. When he spied Billy he thought one of the prize goats had escaped from the cattle show, so hurried over there to tell them their goat was in his chicken yard. A man with a rope came back with him to capture Billy, never even stopping to see whether or not one of their goats had disappeared.

But when they returned not a goat was to be seen or a chicken either, for that matter, as the chickens had coaxed Billy to butt down the fence so they could escape and he had done so. And the minute it was down, the chickens in the yard flew and ran through the opening out into the fairgrounds and made for the outside fence.

Billy hurried away from this scene of mishaps and as he was now nearly to the fat stock pavilion, he decided to follow the crowd a way and see where all the people were going. He soon discovered that they were on their way to the race track to see a game of auto polo.