The lady saw how Mike felt about it, so she said kindly:
“Well, never mind, my boy. I wouldn’t want to take your pet away from you, any more than I’d want my little boy to lose his, if he had one. It’s all right. But you are lucky to have so good a goat.”
[Illustration: Lightfoot, coming up to get some of the salt which he licked from Mike’s hand, did not know what his master was saying.]
“Yes’m; I think so myself. Come on now, Tessie. I’ll take you home, and if ever you come by yourself on the trolley tracks again I’ll never give you another pickaback ride.”
“Oh, then I won’t ever come,” lisped Tessie, her hand in Mike’s. “And will you give me a piggy back ride now?”
“Yes,” promised Mike; and amid the laughter of the trolley car passengers Mike took the little girl up on his back and trotted off, making believe he was a horse. Lightfoot ran alongside, and, seeing him, Tessie said:
“Lightfoot pushed me so hard I sat down in the grass, Mike.”
“Well, it’s a good thing he did, Tessie, else you might have been harder hit by the car. Now you take my advice and keep away from the tracks or, mind――no more pickaback rides!”
A day or so after that Mike, going up to the top of the rocks to take some salt to his mother’s goats, saw Lightfoot leaping about, kicking up his heels and shaking his horns.
“Sure it’s a fine goat you are intirely, as my dear mother would say,” said Mike softly. “And I wish I could do it.”
Lightfoot, coming up to get some of the salt, which he licked from Mike’s hand, did not know what his master was saying. Even if he had understood the words he would not have known what they referred to.
“If I only could do it,” he said, “it would be great! I could drive home with the washings, and then, maybe, I could earn money with you. I wonder if I could make it myself? I could get the wheels, and a big soap box――
“No,” went on Mike, after a moment of thought, “that wouldn’t do. It would be all right for taking home the washings, but not to give rides for money. I’ve got to get a regular goat harness and a wagon. How can I do it?”
Now you know what Mike was thinking of. He had heard the lady speak of a pony cart, and he wanted a goat wagon for Lightfoot. If he had that he could, as he said, drive home with the big baskets of clean clothes to his mother’s customers. Then Mike had an idea he could give rides to children in the goat wagon, and so earn money.