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Billy Whiskers in France

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<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER VII BUTTON FRIGHTENS TWO NURSES</h2></div> <div> <ANTIMG class="drop-cap" src="images/i-p023.jpg" alt="" /></div> WHILE Billy had been relating his adventures Button had been lying in a box under Stubby’s window, trying to think of a way to get to him and tell him that Billy was here in this very place. “If there was only a fire escape!” he sighed. “Then I could easily make it.” It was getting near supper time but he was still puzzling his brain over the matter when he saw one of the nurses in Stubby’s room come to the window and let down a rope with a basket on it. When it reached the ground she still stood there holding on to the rope as if waiting for some one to come. “What in the world can be going on now, I wonder,” mused Button. Presently from around the corner of the hospital from the kitchen he saw another nurse appear with a tray loaded down with the dogs’ supper. There not being an elevator in this old building, the nurses had thought out this way of saving them climbing the long flight of steps with the heavy trays on which they carried the dogs’ food to them. One nurse would go to the kitchen, get the food prepared[76] by the cook, and then bring it around to this window, place it in the basket, and the nurse in the window would pull it up. When the dogs had finished their meal, the dishes were lowered in the basket just as they had been hauled up, carried back to the kitchen and washed. So you see what a saving of steps this basket elevator really was. “My, if I could only manage to get in that basket and have her pull me up!” thought Button. The cat watched the nurses raise and lower the basket until presently a nurse came from the kitchen, put the food in the basket and went off, forgetting to pull a string which rang a bell, the signal that the basket was ready to be pulled up. “Gee, she has forgotten to pull the string and gone off. I can see the nurse in the window waiting for the signal. She will get tired waiting pretty soon and pull it up, I believe. I am going over and eat up what is in that basket and hop in myself, and then I shall be pulled up. If the basket feels heavy, the nurse will think there must be an extra amount of dishes in this trip.” Suiting the action to the thought, Button hurried over to it, lapped up a cup of milk, ate some cold chicken and potatoes, and then he saw the basket begin to move. Without a moment’s hesitation he jumped in and sat on the soiled dishes and the remaining suppers. Up, up he was slowly drawn, and he heard the nurse mumble to[77] herself, “Wonder what they have in this basket to-night? It feels like a basket of bricks, it is so heavy.” <div class="figright"><ANTIMG src="images/i-p077.jpg" alt="" /></div> “Now if she only doesn’t see me until the basket is safely on the window ledge I shall be lucky. I am afraid if she sees me, it will frighten her and she will let go the basket and down I will fall with a dull thud.” But just as the basket reached the ledge of the window her attention was called to something inside and she turned her head to look, at the same time reaching her hand out and pulling the basket on to the window sill from force of habit. When she turned back to the window, there on the sill sat a black cat with big, yellow eyes looking at her. It startled her so she screamed and pulled the basket in off the sill, and then let go the handle, and it rolled under the bed of one of the patients, spilling out bottles of milk, biscuits, sliced chicken, and many other good things. [78]Taking advantage of the confusion, Button jumped down from the window and ran under the beds until he came to the one occupied by Stubby. Then he moved softly so as not to frighten Stubby, and crawled in bed under the sheets so no one could see him. No one did see him do it for every dog in the ward was sitting up in bed, straining their eyes to see what had happened by the window. “The cat! The cat! Where did it go?” the nurse kept calling in an excited voice. For when she turned to look for him, the cat she had seen was gone. After all the nurses had looked under every bed and in all the corners and in every other conceivable place, they began to tease her and tell her it was an illusion, that she had only imagined she saw a cat. After awhile she began to think that perhaps this was the case. Still what would make her think she saw a cat when she did not? Especially as she had not even been thinking of cats? The only thing that looked as if she had seen one was that half the dogs’ suppers had been eaten or at least they were short some food. That nurse went to bed that night with a headache from trying to decide whether or not she had seen a cat. Soon after supper the dogs in the hospital were given their last dose of medicine, their bandages were straightened, and then they were ready to be tucked in for the night. The nurses patted the dogs on their heads and said good-night to them just as if they were people. Then they turned down the lights and went out, leaving[79] only the night nurse in charge in one corner of the room where she sat by a shaded light knitting for the soldiers and dreaming and praying for the safe return of her brothers and sweetheart after the war was over. Button did not stir until Stubby stuck his head under the sheet and whispered to him that he could talk now, as the nurse was so occupied in picking up some stitches in her knitting that she had dropped that she would not hear them. So there the two lay all curled up under the sheet, Button telling of the finding of Billy and Stubby listening with all his ears. When Button had finished, Stubby gave a great sigh and said, “Isn’t it wonderful to think that we should have found him in this big, big country across the sea? My, I am so glad it will make me well soon. For life was not half worth living without our dear chum Billy. I know you agree with me, Button.” “I surely do!” exclaimed Button. “How is your leg, old fellow? Healing fast, I hope.” “Oh, yes. The nurse said they would take the splints off to-morrow, and she doesn’t think I am going to be lame, it was healed so straight and fine. Isn’t that grand? For I would hate to be bothered limping along on a lame leg on our trips. It would be very inconvenient when I wished to run away when some one was chasing us, too. I hate to hurry you off, Button, but the night nurse will be coming around soon to straighten our beds and give us our[80] last drink for the night so I am afraid she might lift up the sheet and find you. But how are you going to get out of the door into the hall, as it is shut?” <div class="figright"><ANTIMG src="images/i-p081.jpg" alt="" /></div> “Trust me! I will get out as I came—by the window.” “I did not know there was a fire escape by the window,” said Stubby. “There isn’t. I came up on the food basket.” And then Button told him how he had come up in the basket and nearly scared a nurse to death. “But you can’t go down that way because there is no one here to let the basket down,” objected Stubby. “I don’t need any basket to go down in. All I need is the rope, and as it is fastened to the wall I will just have to slide down it.” “Oh, Button, but you are a smart cat! You should have been born a man, not a cat. If you had, the world would have heard of wonderful things you had done, I am sure.” “If you wish I had been born a man, I wish the three of us had. Wouldn’t Billy have made a splendid brigadier general, while you would have made a dandy lieutenant!” “S-s-s-s-sh-h-h! I hear the nurse coming. Scoot! Drop out of bed on the side nearest the wall and run under the beds until you are near the window,” advised Stubby. [81]The nurse was walking down the aisle of the ward that faced the window when the moon came out from under a cloud and shone straight into the room. And she saw not only the moon, but a big black cat as it jumped up on the window sill. She shut her eyes, looked again and again, and the cat had disappeared! “It must be the same cat that Nurse Mollie saw, and now it has disappeared again as completely as it did when she saw it. She got one glimpse and it was gone. I got another, and it faded in thin air. Heavens! We must be going to be bombarded for black cats bring bad luck, they say, and this cat has come to warn us. I’ll just run to the window and see if I can’t see it. It could not jump out of the window because it is too high from the ground, and it isn’t in this room, and cats can’t fly, so where is it?” The nurse went to the window and looked out. No tree, roof or shed was near enough for the cat to have jumped to them and[82] then to the ground, so of course it must have been a spook cat for no cat was in sight. She never looked close to the building, or she would have seen a rope to which clung a black cat, hanging on desperately as it lowered itself to the ground. <hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> [83] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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