Billikens’ Surprise

By Helen Hawley

Gilbert was a little boy who was going to have the first suit of clothes, that were not homemade.  Wasn’t that an event!  Gilbert thought so.  He was going to the city with father and mother to be fitted.

Mr. Haywood said to his wife.  “You’d better take the boy and go with me as far as Branton.  It’s the best place I know of, for fitting out little fellows like him.  Maybe I can stop over long enough to help you.  I’ll look up the time-table.”

That’s the way it happened that Gilbert and his mother came back to their home at midnight.  For this story isn’t about the hours in the city, it’s about the reaching home so very late.  Maybe you’ll like to know, though, that the new clothes were all right, and Gilbert was a very happy though a very sleepy boy by midnight.

But he was wide-awake enough when the cab drew up at their own door, and he heard his mother exclaim.  “Why, the house is lighted!  There’s a bright light in the living room, and in the dining room too!” Mrs. Haywood had paid the driver and he whirled the cab away before she thought.  “I do wish I’d asked him to stay, until we could see what it means.”

Gilbert was eager to press forward, but his mother put him behind her.  She fully expected to see burglars searching for silver, or taking money from the desk.

But the sight which actually greeted her made her drop into a chair and laugh.  And Gilbert!  He threw up his cap, almost shouting.  “That’s great, isn’t it, mother?  Wasn’t it cute of Billikens to light up for us to get in?”

Now Billikens was a beautiful white Persian kitten, which had come to Gilbert on his last birthday, and as full of mischief as a kitten could be.  Billikens sat perched on the back of an easy-chair under one of the lights, looking for all the world as if he tried to say, “I did it, for sure.”

[Illustration:  Billikens sat perched on the back of an easy-chair.]

It was this way:  Gilbert had often held Billikens up to play with the electric light cords, and once when the kitten had pulled just right, the light flashed out.  Afterward, it became a kind of game to take him round to the brackets, and let him light up.

“I’m afraid we’ll have to stop his doing it,” Gilbert’s mother said.  “I doubt if you can teach a cat that what is done in play mustn’t be done in earnest.”

“That’s too bad,” Gilbert was quite grieved.  “It’s such fun to see him put on the lights.  He almost laughs, himself.  We could shut him up if we were away, mother dear.”

“Well, perhaps.”

Gilbert was a thoughtful little chap.  Now he said, “I learned, didn’t I, mother?  Grandfather liked to have me pull his whiskers when he was awake, but once I pulled them when he was taking a nap, and he didn’t like it one bit.  I never did it after that.”