Nevertheless, before setting out on that errand, he went down into the garden and took a long look at all the land which had been walled in. It might be as good as ever, for a garden, but it had a queer, shut-up appearance.
“Where’s Billy?” he inquired, aloud. “Hullo. There he is, out on the avenue. How did the old rascal foot it up that wall?”
There was Billy, indeed, with his toes on the very edge, and with a wisp of something green sticking out at one side of his mouth.
“Greens!” exclaimed Rodney. “He can steal from a grocer’s wagon better than any other goat I know of.—We used to have a garden. Tell you what, we can make garden of our lots and all the others, too, if we can only have it ploughed. But how would a horse and plough ever get down here?”
It was a pretty deep question and he gave it up, for that time. In a minute more he was upstairs and out through the window, on his errand to Pat. So far as he knew, he left the house without a living soul in it, but before he reached the next corner, the door of the little back bedroom, at the head of the stairs, went to with a sharp slam. It must have been a strong draft of air that did it, or else the door shut itself.
Pat was found and a bargain was made but Rodney did not see the new door. That is, the old door that was to take the place of the window. In fact, he felt like being satisfied with almost anything.
When he reached home again, he closed the window carefully behind him and went down and out for another look around at his vacant land. Hardly was he beyond the back doorstep, however, before he was hailed with:
“Rodney!—Do look up there!—Doesn’t he look funny! How did he ever manage to get there?”
“Why!—Millie!” exclaimed Rodney.
“Ba-a-a-beh!” came almost piteously down from the upper back window, on the left. It Was Rodney’s own room and the window had been left open, to air it, and there was Billy.