CHAPTER VII
THE LAUGHING GALLERY
I KNOW not what other people think about the matter, but there is nothing in this wide, wide world so useful to me as flattery,” meditated Billy after leaving the Duke of Windham. “It will bring quicker returns than anything else, and I fancy that with this weapon I can conquer almost any foe.
“Now the Duke of Windham has not the faintest idea that my call was made for the sole reason that I wanted a comfortable lodging for the night, and that I had planned my visit with care. He is congratulating himself on his bigness of heart this very moment, that I’ll wager. Anyway, my object is attained, and now I can enjoy myself with no thought or dread of the night. The time was when I did not think anything of spending a night in the open, but then it is not so much that I’m growing old as it is these disagreeable, rheumatism-breeding fogs that accompany the October nights.”
Billy disliked to acknowledge even to himself that old age was creeping on apace, and that it was necessary to have extra care if he would enjoy good health.
“Who can explain why all the people are hurrying and scurrying so? They act as crazy as loons, and that is no exaggeration.”
Just then a raindrop hit Billy spitefully on the tip of the nose, and others pelted him on the back.
“Ah, ha! So this is the trouble, is it? I’ve been so deep in thought that I’ve not cast a glance at the sky, but the outlook is that we will have a little rain storm. Clouds like that great black bank there in the west mean something to me. Ho, ho! And some Fourth of July effects thrown in!” chuckled the goat as a vivid flash of lightning was quickly followed by a reverberating roll of thunder.
“The greatest fun I know is watching a crowd caught in a storm. I’ll stroll along and enjoy it to the full extent.”
Billy did not realize how impolite it is to make light of another’s distress. His mother, I fear, had been negligent in his training on this point of etiquette.
“Did you ever see anything one-half so laughable as that old lady? See her picking her way along, skirts held high, revealing her gaudy hosiery. They look as Dutch as my old master Hans—red and dark blue is the color combination I do believe! Why doesn’t the goosie put up her umbrella instead of holding it so tightly under her arm? Forgotten that she was wise enough to bring it, I suppose. Guess I will follow her a way and see the excitement she’s bound to create.”
Taking up his position immediately behind her, he began the chase, for he found it such, experiencing some difficulty to keep at her heels as she dodged first this way and then that, in and out, in a frantic attempt to push her way quickly through the hurrying throng, all jostling, all wet, all bedraggled, but all good-humored, taking the sudden downpour in good part.
In fact, there is nothing more infectious than the good spirits of a fair-day crowd. Nothing is sufficient to upset their equanimity, and although in nine seasons out of ten there is a shower or a steady, cold drizzle which plays havoc with new fall millinery, suits and footwear, each year sees everyone bravely arrayed in their best bibs and tuckers as if tempting the weather man to do and send his worst.
Country maidens were there, all bedight in bright colored finery, blushing under the escort of brawny farm lads whose genial faces wore the ruddy glow of perfect health, youth and happiness peeping through the thick coat of tan left by old Sol’s summer visits as they toiled harvesting the golden wheat and later in cornfield and potato patch.
Business men in their trim, conventional clothes were likewise present, glad to see so many evidences of prosperity in the exhibits; glad, too, for the brief release from office and store. Their wives, some plainly arrayed, others with nodding plumes and rustling silks, flaunting their riches with pride, accompanied them.
School girls and boys from the town were there, for this was “children’s day” and no dull lessons called them. The whole country was in festive spirits, but most of all the school children enjoyed the freedom from books and studies.
All these, young and old, the rich and the poor, the honored and the humble, made up the throng now so eagerly seeking shelter from the driving storm, but Billy was far too much engrossed in his pursuit to have eyes for anything or anyone but the excited, blustering old woman he was tagging so persistently.
“She reminds me of the posters I see on every hand of the Dutch woman chasing after something with the big stick in her hand. Harry says it’s dirt she’s after, but Dick always asks, ‘Well, where’s the dirt, then?’”
“All this old lady needs is the wooden shoes, for she’s the stick and the stride already.”
“Oh, no, you’ll not leave me so easily as that,” as she darted into a building. “I’m right after you,” and in he dodged, only to be confronted by a doorkeeper who was wrangling with the victim of Billy’s ridicule.
“Vat you say? I geeve you von neekle alreaty. Now you say anodder? You vant the good leeking, young man, to dake some of your smartness out yet still!” her voice running the gamut of the scale in her excitement.
“I GEEVE YOU VON NEEKLE ALREATY.
NOW YOU SAY ANODDER?”
“Ten cents is the price,” calmly replied the ticket-taker, “and it’s stretching the rules to let you in at all. You should be made to buy your ticket at the stand outside. We take no money here, and I’m doing wrong to admit you.”
“Vell, vell, I’ll pay, I’ll pay! Dis rain it is so wery wet, or I spend not one cent mit you!”
She lifted her full petticoat, groped about for the hidden pocket and gingerly produced the second nickle.
The two had been so much interested in their haggling over the admission fee that Billy was unnoticed as he crept stealthily around the German woman, scarcely breathing, so anxious was he to gain entrance. Now that he was effectively shielded from the doorkeeper’s view by her voluminous skirts, he scurried on ahead.
“This is very queer. I thought we were in a large building. But this seems to twist and turn and twist in a most bewildering and aggravating manner,” thought Billy, as he pushed rapidly forward through a narrow hallway. “I begin to think Mrs. Treat’s saying that ‘Things are not always what they seem,’ is pretty true.—Oh, me, what is this?”
Billy was treading on something that swayed and rolled and pitched beneath him like the billows of an angry, boisterous sea and, indeed, he felt much like an inexperienced sailor on his maiden voyage who has not yet found his sea legs.
“I—I—don’t like—this—buffeting. Wish—I was—well—out of—this! My stomach feels—too—shaky—for—comfort,” and in his eagerness to secure a stable footing, he made for the wall, lifting his fore feet very high and planting them very carefully and very, very firmly, trying to feel his way in the midnight blackness. At last he found the wall, or at least what he judged to be the wall, but it swayed away from him as he leaned against it for support, and the pitching and rolling and tumbling grew worse minute by minute.
“A most provoking place, and I don’t see why anyone would pay a dime to get into such a fix!” he mumbled. “Wonder where the old lady is, and how she is enjoying her sea voyage. This is worse than crossing the stormy Atlantic.”
Standing still brought no relief, and so Billy determined to forge ahead, and he resumed his perilous journey with a few excited bleats. Frightened cries from the front and rear followed. Billy repeated his bleating, and wilder grew the commotion.
“It is dark as a dungeon in here, or else I would certainly face about and make for outdoors in double quick time. But as it is, I must go on. If I collided with anyone, it might prove the undoing of both of us, and I for one am not yet ready to end my career. I’ve just enough ginger left in me to want to see what lies at the end of all this.”
“Come to think of it, this must be the ‘unusual experience’ foretold by the Magic Pen,” and Billy’s legs began to shake and his chin whiskers to tremble at fear of the unknown.
“I’m not real sure but that I want to turn back and—” but as he came to this conclusion he turned a corner in the labyrinth and emerged into a dazzle of light which blinded him for a minute after the Stygian darkness of the entrance way.
Halting to get his bearings and to take a general survey of the room, Billy found a wonderful fairyland spread out before him.
Myriads upon myriads of electric lights flooded the hall, revealing wonder upon wonder, for everywhere were the queerest people. Some were giants, others were pigmies. Part were exceedingly tall, with necks stretching out like the giraffe’s at the zoo, lank arms and dangling hands, faces narrow, chins pointed and noses long enough to pry into the business of the whole world. Some, on the other hand, were only two feet tall, but, strange to relate, they were as fat as the tall persons were lean—as fat as the man in the song:
“He’s six feet one way, two feet tudder,
An’ his coat won’t go half way round.”
“Pudgy, I call ’em,” decided Billy with a wag of the head, turning around to take a complete inventory of the room and its occupants. He brought up with a jerk, however, when he discovered his German woman immediately behind him, in excited conversation with another creature exactly like her.
Violently she gesticulated with her large, green-covered umbrella, and just as violently did her counterpart wave her rain-stick and nod her head.
“Vot you look like me for, eh?” the angry woman inquired. “Ain’t you any sense got? I vent hill up und hill down to get here and you come fun to make mid me. Eferyboty they just laugh und laugh at me all dis day, und I von’t haf it any more yet. You are Sherman, too, so then for why do you laugh?”
“There’s just one time that I wish I had been made a boy instead of a goat. Ordinarily, goats have much better times than boys, but when I laugh so hard my fat sides ache, I wish for a pair of hands that I might hold them the way the Treat boys do when they’re mightily tickled. I’m sure I could laugh both harder and longer and enjoy it much more with such a convenience as hands about me,” thought Billy, as he watched this by-play, a broad grin spreading over his face.
With a final threatening look, the woman turned and made off, but only to confront another equally German looking person a few feet farther on, who bore a striking resemblance to her.
“Oh, Maggie, Maggie, don’t you know your own seester any more? How theen you haf got! Been seeck since I vent away from home, Maggie? Shpeek to me, Maggie. ’Tis your own lofing Barbara you see,” putting out her arms to welcome her in a warm embrace.
“Ha, ha, ha, ha!” laughed Billy uproariously. “It takes the Germans to get angry. Ha, ha! Look at her, she’s trying to hug her own image!”
