In his disgust at finding no water, he revenged himself by upsetting the water cooler and spilling all the lemonade. Then he walked out and going into the first tent he came to, he found himself in the room of the leading lady who was fast asleep on a cot. At the end of the tent he saw a small table with a looking-glass hanging above it, but when Billy saw his reflection in it, he did not make the mistake of thinking it was another goat like he had once before. He walked up to the table and seeing a stick of red stuff that looked like candy, he ate it, but it turned out to be a stick of red paint that the leading lady used to paint her lips. After tasting her powder, and upsetting her bottle of perfumery, and chewing her blonde wig, thinking it some kind of yellow grass, he walked out without awakening her.
Next he went into a tent that had pictures of snakes of all kinds painted on it. This was the tent occupied by the snake charmers, but Billy knew nothing about large snakes, only little inoffensive garter snakes, so he went in and commenced nosing around in the baskets he saw setting there with blankets in them to see what was under the blankets.
In the first one, he felt something cold and slippery and not to his taste, so he let it alone, thinking it a piece of garden hose; but when he stuck his nose in the next basket something long and slim and pliable stuck its head out and wound itself around his body drawing itself tighter and tighter, until Billy found himself staggering for want of breath. When he was nearly squeezed to death he made a death-like groan which awoke the Indian snake charmer who was asleep in one corner of the tent on a pile of rugs. The man took in the situation at a glance, and came to Billy's rescue, making the snake uncoil itself by playing on a kind of bagpipe, a queer, weird, monotonous piece of music. This charmed the snake and it uncoiled itself from Billy and, swaying its body, crawled toward the snake charmer.
The second that Billy felt its coils slip from his body, he took a long breath and ran from the tent not even stopping to wiggle his head in thanks for his preservation. Once outside, he made his way back to his own tent where he lay down on his pile of straw to snatch a little sleep before daylight, as unconcerned as if nothing had happened.
