he day after Billy Whiskers was sold to the Biggses he was shut in a small yard to keep him out of mischief. Feeling lonesome, he thought that he would jump the fence and look around a little. He was getting cross-eyed looking through the palings of the fence which were very close together, so suiting the action to the thought, he vaulted over the fence, landing in a kettle of scarlet dye, that had been left there to cool. When he got out of the kettle the fore-part of him was scarlet, and the hind, white, but he did not mind that, so after shaking the drops from his eyes and beard, he was as ready to explore as if nothing had happened.
Seeing the kitchen door open, he went up the steps softly and looked in. He could see no one in the kitchen, and smelling some nice sweet-cakes, which had just been taken out of the oven and placed on the table, he walked cautiously across the floor and began to eat them. From the floor he could only reach a few, so he mounted a chair, and from that stepped onto the table. As he did so, he stepped into a large loaf cake with frosting on it. While kicking that off, and licking the frosting off his feet, he caught sight of a nice red apple that one of the children had put on a small shelf for safe keeping. This he quickly packed away where moth and rust doth not corrupt. Hearing some noise, he was about to get off the table, when raising his head, he faced another goat. But this goat must have come from the infernal regions for in all his life he had never seen such a villainous looking fellow. Billy was no coward, so he backed off as far as the table would allow, and then butted forward as hard as he could. A crash! a bang! and the other goat was upon him, and they both rolled off the table.
Where had the other goat disappeared when he had butted him, and what was this thing around his neck? A looking-glass frame, with little pieces of glass sticking in it. Backing out of the frame, Billy went in pursuit of the other goat; for he did not know that it was his own image he had butted in the kitchen looking-glass. Seeing a dark hall-way, he went boldly in, and walked on toward a light he saw at the other end. Arriving there, he found that the light came from a window in the parlor. He marched in, still looking for his rival, but soon forgot him in gazing at the things in the room, especially a fancy basket of fruit under a glass cover. Now Billy was very partial to fruit of all kinds, so he upset the marble-top table the basket was setting on and out rolled all the luscious looking fruit. He bit into a rosy cheeked peach, but of all fruit he had ever eaten, this was the most tasteless and tough. It stuck to his teeth so he could not separate his upper jaw from his lower. Just then he heard voices, and some one say:
"Susie, I heard a terrible crash down stairs. You had better run down and see what it was. You may have left the kitchen door open and the cat possibly came in and upset something."
Then he heard Susie say, "All right, Mum."
He thought that if anyone was coming down he had better get out so he started on a run, but the door at the end of the hall had blown shut, and the only other way of escape was up the front stairs. As he reached the top, he saw Susie who had been scrubbing the top of the back stairs, throw down her brush, preparatory to going to see what the noise was. They both caught sight of each other at the same moment, and Susie thought the long, sinister looking, scarlet-bearded face with the horns, that appeared at the top of the stairs, was the devil; and with a blood-curdling scream she threw up her hands and rolled to the foot of the stairs, upsetting the pail of suds that she had clutched when she felt herself falling. There she lay too frightened to move, but Billy rushed on trying to find a way out for he commenced to feel that there would be trouble if he were found.
Mrs. Biggs, hearing Susie scream, rushed to the door with her mouth full of tacks, and a hammer in her hand, just in time to get butted into by Billy, which laid her flat on her back in less time than you can wink. As luck would have it, the shock made her open her mouth and the tacks flew out for if she had swallowed them she would never have gotten off her back.