The monkey would climb a pole or sit on top of a wagon, or anything high that was handy, so Billy could not reach him and then call him names and sauce him until Billy pawed the earth with rage, which made the monkey laugh. The only one that could get even with the monkey's tongue was the parrot, and she and the monkey would sit and sauce each other by the hour.
Billy was about cooled down from his fuss with the monkey, when he heard a bugle call and the elephant told him that it was the signal for the procession to start. While Billy had been put through his paces in the circus ring, the elephants had been decked out in scarlet blankets embroidered with gold and funny little summer houses, as Billy thought, strapped to their backs, in which ladies were to ride. The camels had also been fixed up, and from four to six horses, with waving plumes on their heads, had been hitched to each circus wagon.
At another signal from the bugle, they all started to move, led by the men and women performers, dressed in their best spangled velvet suits. Then came what Billy thought to be the best thing in the procession, a golden chariot drawn by twelve Shetland ponies, each pony ridden by a little boy postilion, in scarlet velvet; while in the chariot sat a beautiful, little, golden-haired girl, dressed as a queen, with a diamond crown on her head.
It fairly took Billy's breath away, he thought it all so beautiful, and he started to follow.
"All right, Jim, let him go there if he wants to. He probably thinks the ponies are goats and will behave better than if put with the lions."
"What an idiot that man is!" thought Billy, "to think I don't know a pony from a goat."
It was a good thing they let him march there for he was so taken up with watching the ponies in front of him that he forgot to be mad at Jocko, who was going through all sorts of antics on his back and swinging on Billy's horns. Everything was going smoothly when Billy saw Mike O'Hara coming out of the crowd; he came up to the clown that was walking beside him and said: "Look here, that is my goat!"
"Well, I guess not, you must be crazy."
"I'll prove it to you," said Mike. "Do you see that black spot on his forehead and that he has one black hoof and all the others are white?"
"That don't prove anything," said the clown. "You just noticed that as we were walking along, and now you come up here and try to claim our goat."