In a few days he had become used to the cart and harness and Mike could drive him anywhere. The other goats came to the top of the pile of rocks and looked down at Lightfoot. Many of them wished they could be harnessed up, for Lightfoot got many extra good things to eat from Mike, who liked his driving goat very much. Lightfoot was now a driving goat as well as a leaping one.
“And now it’s time, I guess,” said Mike one day, “to see if I can earn money with my goat and wagon.” He had taken a number of baskets of clean clothes home to his mother’s employers, and, no matter how heavy the basket was, Lightfoot had no trouble in pulling it, with Mike sitting on the front seat of the cart.
Mike made his wagon nice and clean, put a strip of old carpet in the bottom, and started one day for a part of the city where rich folks lived. Along the streets there, on pleasant afternoons, nurse maids would be out walking with the children of whom they took care. When he got to this place Mike drove his goat wagon slowly up and down.
It was not long before a little boy, well dressed, who was walking along with his nurse, cried:
“Oh, Marie! See the wonderful goat wagon! May I have a ride in it?”
“No, no, Master Peter. It is not to ride in.”
“Yes, it is! I want a ride! Will you give me a ride, boy?” he called to Mike.
“You must not ask for rides,” said Marie, the maid. “The boy sells rides—that is, I think he does,” and she looked at Mike and smiled.
“Yes,” answered Mike, “my goat wagon is for hire.”
“Then I want a ride!” cried little Peter. “I want a ride, Marie!”