THE FARMER MAKES FRIENDS WITH BILLY
Friendship is most surely won
By kindly deeds for others done.
_Billy Mink._
The farmer did a lot of thinking after he guessed that it was Billy Mink
who had driven all the Rats out of his barn into his house. “If I could
get that little brown rascal over here to the house,” thought the
farmer, “I would soon be rid of those robber Rats. But how am I going to
do it? If he doesn’t know that those Rats are over here, he certainly
will not venture any nearer to the house than that woodpile. And if he
cannot get into the henhouse to steal my chickens, he won’t stay around
here very long, because he will have little to eat. The thing for me to
do is see that he has plenty to eat and learns where it comes from.”
So the very first thing the farmer did the next morning was to put some
scraps of fresh meat just outside the woodpile. It didn’t take Billy
Mink long to find them. Of course the farmer was out of sight. He was in
the barn, peeping through a crack. He saw Billy come out from under the
wood and sniff at the pieces of meat. It was clear that Billy was
suspicious. He went all around those scraps of meat, and the farmer
could tell by the way he moved that Billy suspected a trap.
But Billy found no trap. Of course not, because there was no trap. At
last he ventured to seize one of those scraps of meat and darted back
into the woodpile with it. A few minutes later he was out again, just as
cautious as before. So, one by one, he took the scraps of meat under the
woodpile. The farmer smiled as he saw the last scrap disappear. He knew
that Billy had enough for a good meal and that with a stomach well
filled he would probably take a nap.
This is just what Billy did. All the time he kept wondering about those
scraps of meat and how they had happened to be so handy. “It’s queer,”
thought Billy, “how that meat happened to be right there. I wonder if
that farmer could have dropped it. If he did, I hope he’ll do it again.”
With this, Billy went to sleep.
Just at dusk Billy awoke. He was hungry again. He began to think of
those hens over in the henhouse. Then he remembered the trap he had
found over there and decided he would keep away from the henhouse. He
decided that he would go over to the big barn to see if any of those
Rats had returned. And then, all of a sudden, he remembered the easy
breakfast he had had that morning. Instantly Billy popped his head out
from under the woodpile. He didn’t really expect to find any more scraps
of meat, and you can guess just how surprised and pleased he was when he
found that there were some more scraps just where he had found his
breakfast that morning. For the first time Billy suspected that they
might have been put there especially for him, and in his heart he began
to have a friendly feeling for that farmer.