“Oh, you’d better not,” said Blackie. “If you go up there you may slip and fall down here and hurt yourself, or some of the big goats may chase you back.”
“Well, if they do I’ll just jump down again,” went on Lightfoot, as he stood on his hind legs.
“You can’t jump that far,” said Blackie, looking up toward the high rocks which were far above the heads of herself and Lightfoot.
For Lightfoot and Blackie were two goats, and they lived with several others on the rocky hillside at the edge of a big city. Lightfoot and Blackie, with four other goats, were owned by the widow, Mrs. Malony. She and her son Mike had a small shanty on the ground in the shadow of the big rocks. The reason they kept most of the goats was for the milk they gave. For some goats, like cows, can be milked, and many persons like goats’ milk better than the cows’ kind, which the milkman brings to your door every morning, or which is brought to the house from the stable or the lot where the cows are milked if you live in the country.
“You can never jump down that far if the big goats chase you away when you get on top of the high rocks,” went on Blackie as she looked up.
“Well, maybe I can’t do it all in one jump,” Lightfoot said slowly, “but I can come down in two or three if the big goats chase me away. Anyhow, maybe they won’t chase me.”
“Oh, yes, they will!” bleated Blackie in the animal talk which the goats used among themselves.
They could understand a little man talk, but not much. But they could talk and think among themselves.
“The big goats will never let you come up where they are,” went on Blackie, who was called that because she was nearly all black. She would give milk to the Widow Malony when she grew older.
“Why won’t the big goats let me go up there?” asked Lightfoot. “I know it is nicer up there than down here, for I have heard Grandfather Bumper, the oldest of all us goats, tell how far he can see from the top of the rocks. And nice sweet grass grows up there. I’d like some of that. The grass here is nearly all dried up and gone.”