oman to lend us her goat till the baby got big enough to chew
beef, for a dollar a week, and paid a dollar in advance, and Pa went up
in the evening to help me get the goat. Well it was the darndest mistake
you ever see. There was two goats so near alike you could not tell which
was the goat we leased, and the other goat was the chum of our goat,
but it belonged to a Nirish woman. We got a bed cord hitched around the
Irish goat, and that goat didn't recognize the lease, and when we tried
to jerk it along it rared right up, and made things real quick for Pa.
I don't know what there is about a goat that makes it get so spunky, but
that goat seemed to have a grudge against Pa from the first. If there
were any places on Pa's manly form that the goat did not explore, with
his head, Pa don't know where the places are. O, it lammed him, and
when I laffed Pa got mad. I told him every man ought to furnish his own
goats, when he had a baby, and I let go the rope and started off, and Pa
said he knew how it was, I wanted him to get killed. It wasn't that, but
I saw the Irish woman that owned the goat coming around the corner of
the house with a cistern pole. Just as Pa was getting the goat out of
the gate the goat got cross ways of the gate, and Pa yanked, and doubled
the goat right up, and I thought he had broke the goats neck, and the
woman thought so too, for she jabbed Pa with the cistern pole just
below the belt, and she tried to get a hold on Pa's hair, but he had her
there. No woman can get the advantage of Pa that way 'cause Ma has tried
it. Well, Pa explained it to the woman, and she let Pa off if he would
pay her two dollars for damages to her goat, and he paid it, and then we
took the nanny goat, and it went right along with us. But I have got
my opinion of a baby that will drink goat's milk. Gosh, it is like this
stuff that comes in a spoiled cocoanut. The baby hasn't done anything
but blat since the nurse coupled it onto the goat hydrant. I had to take
all my playthings out of the basement to keep the goat from eating them.
I guess the milk will taste of powder and singed hair now. The goat got
to eating some Roman candles me and my chum had laid away in the coal
bin, and chewed them around the furnace, and the powder leaked out and
a coal fell out of the furnace on the hearth, and you'd a dide to see
Pa and the hired girl and the goat. You see Pa can't milk nothing but
a milk wagon, and he got the hired girl to milk the