It was bitter, sour medicine, too, and Buddy didn't like it, and he didn't like to be ill, either, but one always is when one eats too many ice cream cones and drinks too much lemonade on a hot day; yes, indeed, and a bottle of paregoric besides.
Well, Buddy was sick, and couldn't go to the moving-picture show, but his mamma and papa thought it would be all right to leave him home alone, as he was getting better by that time.
"I'll tell you all about the show when we come back," promised Brighteyes. "There is going to be a fairy play in it."
"Oh!" cried Buddy, "how I wish I could go! I love fairy plays!"
"You will be much better in bed," said Dr. Pigg, "and if you keep quiet you won't have to take any more medicine."
There was no help for it, and Dr. Pigg and his wife and daughter started off. They knew Buddy would be much more comfortable in bed than at the show, or they would never have left him, and right next door lived a family of chickens, who would come over in case anything happened.
Buddy felt a little lonesome when his folks had gone, but after awhile he fell asleep. He dozed off for some time, and, all of a sudden, he was awakened by hearing something going "thumpity-thump-bump-bump-bump! Humpity-hump-bump-bump!" on the ceiling and walls of his room. Then it went "bangity-bung-bung," and before Buddy knew what was happening, if something didn't go slam-bang-crack into the lamp, and put it out, leaving the poor little guinea pig boy in the dark.
Then how frightened he was! He shivered, and crept down with his head beneath the bed clothes, but all the while he kept hearing that "thumpity-thump-bump-hump-lump-dump!" against the ceiling. First he thought it was the bad fox, who had gotten in to eat him up, and then he knew the fox couldn't fly around the room that way, or, if it could, it would make ever so much more noise. Then he thought it might be an owl, with big, round, staring, yellow eyes, but when he peeped out from under the clothes the least bit, he didn't see any eyes, so he knew it couldn't be the owl.
"Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" cried Buddy, when he was so frightened he couldn't keep still any longer, "Oh, dear! I wish my papa and mamma would come home; and Brighteyes, too!"
"What for?" asked a voice, away high up on the ceiling.