Billy Whiskers' Travels

by Frances Trego Montgomery

Here things were even worse than they had been on the top floor, for by this time the hubbub above them had brought everybody out of their rooms, and the crowd was already there. As soon as Billy scampered to his feet after his tumble and made another jump high into the air, they too began running and screaming.

Billy now had gotten into a series of halls that ran the whole length of the building and had a stairway at each end, so now he jumped and struggled his way along until he came to a stairway, tumbled down it, jumped back through another hall full of screaming people to another stairway, and so on until he reached the ground floor. Here the stairway opened into the great, marble-paved, main corridor of the hotel. This was just now thronged with men, all wanting to know why the lights were out and what all the uproar was about. Through these men Billy dashed like a hurricane, having now torn the curtains enough to let his legs have some action. One big fellow whom he upset fell on the long trailing end of the curtain, and the shock nearly tore Billy's horns loose from his head, but the curtain pulled in two and at last Billy was free except for a few stray shreds and small pieces that still clung to his legs and horns.

Now he could see where he was going, and, darting out of the side door, he ran back to where he remembered the cellar steps into the porter's room to be. The door was wide open and inside he found his friend, the porter, with a lantern, looking for him. The porter saw at once from the shreds of curtain that Billy had been into mischief again, but as before, he was afraid to say anything about it for fear somebody would find out that he had left the door of the store-room open, so he simply took the shreds of lace curtain off of Billy to carry away with him, and fixed Billy's bed nicely for the night.

"Bet you came from the Bad Place sure, goat-beast," said the porter, shaking his head.

CHAPTER VI

A CELEBRATION WITH FIREWORKS

he next morning, bright and early, the porter came down to Billy's room with a queer looking box made of heavy slats. One side of the box was off and the porter carried it in his hand. Setting the box down with the open side towards Billy, the porter put an extra bunch of carrots in it, and Billy, never having seen anything like this before, walked right in and began to eat his breakfast, upon which the porter quickly slapped on the side of the box and nailed it tight. Billy did not realize that he was trapped until the porter and another man whom he called lifted the box and began to carry it up the stairs. Then Billy was angry in earnest. He jumped and jerked as much as he could and nearly threw the men down-stairs by his bouncing. As soon as they got up on the level ground, however, the porter and the other man began to shake the crate as hard as they could, so that, in place of Billy doing the bouncing, he was being bounced until he had plenty of it and was glad to lie down on the floor of the crate and hold still, while he was being carried to a big dray that stood in waiting.

While it was being loaded on the dray, Mr. Brown and Frank came out in the courtyard to see him.

"Isn't he a beauty, papa?" said Frank. "And he behaves himself so nicely, too. I've been down to see him every other day and he's just as nice and quiet as he can be."