"Didn"t you hear a racket going on in there?"
"No. We just came down from the upper deck."
"Well, take my word for it and vanish before you are hit with a club or thrown overboard. I"ll be with you as soon as I lick up this grease. Since you have eaten all the bacon I had so much trouble to get, I am not going to lose this grease anyway."
Splash bang! came water, bucket and all down on Billy"s head. Quick as lightning, Billy jumped through the window through which it had come, and found himself standing face to face with the cook, who had the most astonished expression on his face you ever saw when he beheld Billy coming through the high, small window.
Billy stood on his hind legs and knocked the jaunty little white cook"s cap off the man"s head with one of his fore legs before the cook could defend himself or turn to run. They were in very close quarters as a ship"s kitchen is not the largest room in the world. At last the cook got up enough courage to strike out at Billy. He intended to hit the goat in the stomach as he stood towering before him, but alas! his knuckles hardly touched Billy"s stomach when he found himself flying backwards across the long, narrow room, out through the opposite door and hit the railing of the boat so hard it broke and let him fall splash into the water.
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On perceiving this, Billy turned and ran off the boat, and soon found Stubby and b.u.t.ton, who were waiting for him. When they had gotten far enough away for safety, they stopped under a large shade tree and had a good laugh at Billy"s recital of how he b.u.t.ted the cook overboard.
"It will do him good," said b.u.t.ton. "I bet it will be the first bath he has had in weeks."
"Bet so too," agreed Stubby.
"Well, what are we going to do now?" asked Billy. "That bacon has made me more hungry than ever. The salt in it has just whetted my appet.i.te."
"Mine too," said Stubby. "I feel as if I could drink the river dry, I am so thirsty."
"Say we trot along this drive that runs by the river until we come to some house that has a yard around it, where we can hide until we have a chance to sneak into the house or stable to see what we can find to eat," proposed b.u.t.ton.
They had to travel several miles to find such a place for they were still in the suburbs of New York City and not far enough out for the summer homes with their beautiful grounds. Once they pa.s.sed a roadhouse where they got a drink out of a watering trough for animals and stole a few mouthfuls of food from some baskets a greengrocer had left outside the kitchen door. b.u.t.ton and Stubby stole only meat and went running off, b.u.t.ton with a big lamb chop between his teeth and Stubby with a huge steak, while Billy contented himself with a head of lettuce. They were just rounding a bend of the road when they heard an excited Frenchman calling to them. Turning to look, they saw the French cook wildly waving his arms at them and calling to them to bring back his things. But they only kicked up their heels at him and disappeared from his view around the bend in the road.
"Gee!" exclaimed Stubby, "this steak is the best thing I have had to eat in a fat goose"s age."
"Yum! Yum!" replied b.u.t.ton. "It can"t beat this chop for tenderness and juiciness."
"Nor my head lettuce. It is as sweet as sugar and as cold as ice. I just dote on cold, crisp lettuce. The colder and more crisp, the better. But I am afraid that cook will have an apoplectic fit if he isn"t careful, the way he was waving his arms and carrying on.
Excitement such as that is very bad for a fat old cook of forty."
"Hark! I hear an auto coming from the roadhouse. We better get back farther in the bushes and hide until it pa.s.ses. They might be after us," said Stubby.
But they were not pursuers, but only two young fellows chatting and laughing over the dismay of the cook, for he had called to them that if they saw a big goat, small dog and black cat to run over them and kill them dead, dead, dead!
CHAPTER IV
AN UNEXPECTED SHOWER BATH
Just at dusk the next day Billy, Stubby and b.u.t.ton entered a small town to look for some nice quiet place for them to sleep, for they had traveled far that day and were tired of being chased by dogs and stoned by boys. So when they came to a small bungalow on the outskirts of the town with a cellar door open and no one around to drive them away, the three stepped in as noiselessly as possible and crept down the cellar stairs to find a place to hide until the family had gone to bed. Then they would begin to look about for something to eat for they expected to find potatoes and probably other vegetables there for Billy to eat and some kind of cold meat for Stubby and b.u.t.ton, and perhaps a pie or piece of cake, either of which would be very acceptable to all of them for they dearly loved sweets of all kinds.
The corners of the cellar were quite dark as by this time the sun had set, so Billy hid himself in one corner behind a pile of kindling, while Stubby crawled under the stationary wash tubs and b.u.t.ton curled himself up on top of a high pile of boxes, from which place he could see a swinging shelf with a plate of cold meat and boiled potatoes, as well as an uncut pie and some doughnuts on it. In the opposite corner of the cellar Billy spied a pile of potatoes and some cabbage and carrots.
"Well, I declare," exclaimed b.u.t.ton, "if we are not lucky! Here we find a good supper all laid out that will just suit our different tastes. Meat and potatoes for Stubby, as well as potatoes, cabbage and carrots for Billy."
"Hark! I hear some one coming!" warned Stubby. "I do hope whoever it is, they don"t find us and drive us out just when a good supper is in sight, and also a nice quiet place to sleep."
Clumpety, clump, clumpety, clump, down the stairs came a stupid looking German girl with a plate of fried chicken in one hand and a dish of lovely crisp lettuce in the other. These she put on the shelf and then turned and stumped her way up the stairs again. Then they heard her locking up for the night, as they thought, but soon she appeared wearing her hat and went out the side door through which they had come into the cellar. They all kept very still for a little while, then b.u.t.ton meowed to Stubby to tell him what he could see on the shelf for them to eat, and where Billy could find some potatoes and other vegetables. Stubby crawled out from under the tubs and ran to where b.u.t.ton said the shelf was, but alas, alack! how was he to get at the things on the shelf? It was six feet above him and so hung from the ceiling that there was absolutely no way for him to climb up to it.
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"Gee whiz! It makes me hungrier than ever to smell all those goodies and not be able to get at them!"
While Stubby was standing there trying to think out a way to reach them, b.u.t.ton cautiously climbed down from the boxes onto the shelf and with his nose and paw poked a big, round potato and a thick slice of meat off the plate to the floor. As they fell, they hit Stubby on the nose and made him jump, it was so unexpected, and at first he thought some one was throwing things at him. While he ate the meat, b.u.t.ton helped himself to fried chicken and Billy came over and baaed to him not to be so greedy but to throw him down some lettuce.
"Why don"t you go over into that corner and eat those carrots and other vegetables?" meowed b.u.t.ton.
"Because I am not such a goose as to eat cold, dirty potatoes and cows" food when I can get my favorite nice, crisp lettuce."
The three ate and ate, for they were very hungry after their long tramp on the road all day. After b.u.t.ton had pushed all the food onto the floor he did not want for himself, and had licked the plate, he said, "I wish I had a nice drink of milk now, to quench my thirst. If I had that, I could go to sleep and sleep until daylight without waking, even if a rat chewed my tail and a mouse bit my ear."
"A pail of clean, cool water would please me better," said Billy.
"Me too," said Stubby. "Listen! I hear water running somewhere," he added.
"It sounds to me as if it were in the kitchen upstairs," said Billy.
"I don"t hear any one stirring around up there, so let us go and get a drink and then turn in for the night."
Billy walked to the cellar stairs and was half way up, while Stubby and b.u.t.ton were just behind him, when they heard some one exclaim, "Chester, come quick! Come quick! The water is running in the sink, and the cellar floor is flooded."
This was followed by the loud laughter of two people.
"Whatever shall we do?" said a girl"s distressed voice.
"Get a mop and mop it up!" replied a boy.
"But the mop is in the cellar and I"ll get my feet wet if I cross the floor to go to the cellar. Besides, I have on my best white shoes."
"Where do you keep the broom? That will do."
"Behind the kitchen door usually, but with the house all torn up with housecleaning, I don"t know where it is."
"I"ll find it. You stay out of the room so you won"t get wet."
"Who ever would have thought that just because I happened to set that coffee pot over the hole in the sink that it would stop it up so tight that the water when it overflowed the coffee pot would fill the sink and make it overflow?"
"No one would," answered the boy. "And here is all this mess just because we hadn"t any sense and tried to cool a bottle of ginger ale by setting it in the coffee pot and letting the water run on it."
The three listeners on the stairs heard the boy cross the kitchen and turn off the water. Then they heard him get the broom from behind the kitchen door.
"Where are you going to sweep the water?" asked the girl.
"Down the cellar stairs! It won"t hurt anything down there," and before Billy, Stubby or b.u.t.ton could move, a deluge of water struck them full in the face, blinding them and sousing them from the tips of their noses to the ends of their tails.