At the end of the tent he saw a small table with a
looking-glass hanging above it, but when Billy saw his reflection
in it, he did not make the mistake of thinking it was another
goat like he had once before. He walked up to the table and
seeing a stick of red stuff that looked like candy, he ate it,
but it turned out to be a stick of red paint that the leading
lady used to paint her lips. After tasting her powder, and
upsetting her bottle of perfumery, and chewing her blonde wig,
thinking it some kind of yellow grass, he walked out without
awakening her.
Next he went into a tent that had pictures of snakes of all kinds
painted on it. This was the tent occupied by the snake charmers,
but Billy knew nothing about large snakes, only little inoffensive
garter snakes, so he went in and commenced nosing around in the
baskets he saw setting there with blankets in them to see what was
under the blankets.
In the first one, he felt something cold and slippery and not to
his taste, so he let it alone, thinking it a piece of garden
hose; but when he stuck his nose in the next basket something
long and slim and pliable stuck its head out and wound itself
around his body drawing itself tighter and tighter, until Billy
found himself staggering for want of breath.
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