Jimmy sat on the gate and watched them. After five times round the field the goat sat down and looked nonplussed.
Jimmy knows all about goats; he knows what to do with them, and he showed me. He got it so tame that it would feed out of your hand. It ate half a newspaper one day and it made it very fiery. Jimmy said it was the War news. We were trying to harness it to a perambulator Jimmy had borrowed. Jimmy said it had to have a bell on its neck so that people would know it was coming, just like the Alps.
Jimmy said goats could jump from one Alp to the other, and they always did that in Switzerland and it sounded very pretty in the evening.
I hadn't got a little bell that tinkled so I brought the dinner bell, and we tied it on to the goat's neck with a rope. Jimmy said it would make the goat feel glad.
It took us a long time to harness the goat properly because it was so fidgety. There wasn't much room in the cart, but we both managed to squeeze in, and Faithful ran on in front. The goat doesn't like Faithful; it has an aversion to him when he bays. Faithful knew the goat was coming after him because he could hear the bell.
There was more room for Jimmy when I fell out, but Faithful kept straight in the middle of the road doing the side-stroke as hard as he could with both hands. I could hear the bell. Jimmy said a horse and trap climbed over the hedge to let them pass. The man in the trap said something to Jimmy, but Jimmy couldn't catch what he said; it was such a long sentence. Jimmy said they went into an ironmonger's shop, all of them. Faithful got there first. He deployed amongst some buckets which were outside the shop. So did the goat. The noise disturbed the ironmonger. He took his wife and children into the cellar. Jimmy said it was the noise that did it, and the goat's face.
The ironmonger's wife told Jimmy she had had a shock; she spoke to him out of the cellar window. Jimmy says she had a catch in her breath.
The goat didn't go back to the field very quickly; it was because one of the wheels was bent and the goat seemed to have caught a hiccough. That was because it ran so fast after eating the newspaper, Jimmy says. He says all goats are like that.
The goat won't eat out of Jimmy's hand now; whenever it sees Jimmy it tries to climb a tree. A boy told Jimmy that the man who owns the goat is concerned about it, so Jimmy goes hunting German spies with Faithful down another road now.