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"I want to buy the monkey that saved my little girl. Please sell him to me. We will give him a good home, and we will always love him, for what he did for us."
"Well, I don't like to lose such a good trick monkey," said Mappo's master, "but I will let you have him. Be kind to him, for he is a good little chap."
"Oh, we'll be very kind to him," the baby's papa promised. "We have a dog named Don, and a cat named Tabby. I am sure Mappo will like them. We will be very good to him."
And so Mappo, after having lived in the jungle, and afterward joining a circus, went to live at the home of the baby, after it was built over, for it was badly damaged by the fire. And Mappo made friends with Don and Tabby and had a lovely time.
But there are other animals of whose lives I can tell you, and the next book in this series is going to be called "Tum Tum, the Jolly Elephant: His Many Adventures."
"Weren't you afraid when you climbed up that rain-water pipe to get the baby?" asked Don the dog of Mappo, one day.
"I wasn't afraid of climbing, but I was a little afraid of the fire," said the monkey.
"I wish I were as brave as you," said Tabby, the cat. "Come on, let's have a game of tag."
And the three animal friends played a game very much like our tag; and now we will say good-by to them.
<eob>
Peterkin
By
Mrs. Molesworth
Chapter I
What Can Have Become Of Him?
WE were all at tea in the nursery. All except him. The door burst open and James put his head in.
'If you please, Mrs. Brough,' he began, -- 'Mrs. Brough' is the servants' name for nurse. Mamma calls her 'Brough' sometimes, but we always call her 'nurse,' of course, -- 'If you please, Mrs. Brough, is Master Peterkin here?'
Nurse looked up, rather vexed. She doesn't like burstings in.
'Of course not, James,' she said. 'He is out driving with his mamma. You must have seen them start.'
'It's just that,' said James, in his silly way. 'It's his mamma that wants to know.'
And then we noticed that James's face was much redder than usual. It may have been partly that he had run upstairs very fast, for he is really very good-natured, but it looked as if he was rather in a fuss, too.
Nurse sat very bolt up in her chair, and her face began to get queer, and her voice to get vexeder. Lots of people get cross when they are startled or frightened. I have noticed it.
'What do you mean, James? Please to explain,' she said.
'I can't stop,' he said, 'and I don't rightly understand, myself. His mamma sent Master Peterkin home before her, half-an-hour ago or more, but he hasn't come in, not as I've seen, nor nobody else, I'm afraid. So where he's got to, who can say?'
And James turned to go.
Nurse stopped him, getting up from her place as she spoke.
'Was he in the carriage?' she asked.
'Of course not. Beckett would have seen him in, all right, if he had been,' said James, in a very superior tone. 'He was to run home by himself a bit of a way, as I take it,' he added, as he hurried off at last.
'I must go downstairs to your mamma,' said nurse. 'Miss Blanchie, my dear, will you look after Miss Elvira, and see that she doesn't spill her tea?'
'Nursie,' said Elvira, in a very offended tone, 'you know I never spill my tea now.'
'Not since the day before yesterday,' I was beginning to say, but I didn't. For I thought to myself, if there was any real trouble about Peterkin, it wouldn't be at all a good time to tease each other. I don't think Elf -- that's Elvira's pet name -- had understood about him being lost. Indeed, I don't think I had quit...
'Clem,' I said, 'do you think there can really be anything the matter?'
Clement is the eldest of us all, and he is always the one we go to first if we are in any trouble. But he is sometimes rather slow; he is not as quick and clever as Blanche, and she often puts him down at first, though she generally comes round to his way in the end. She answered for him now, though I hadn't spoken to ...
'How can there not be something the matter?' she said sharply. 'If Peterkin has been half-an-hour or an hour, perhaps, wandering about the streets, it shows he has at least lost his way, and who knows where he's got to. I wish you wouldn't ask such silly questions, Giles.'
Then, all of a sudden, Elf burst out crying. It may have been partly Blanche's sharp tone, which had startled her, and made her take more notice of it all.
'Oh, Clem, Clem,' she wailed, 'could he have been stolened?'
'No, no, darling,' said Clement, dabbing her face with his pocket-handkerchief. 'There are kind policemen in the streets, you know. They wouldn't let a little boy like Peterkin be stolen.'
'But they does take little boys to pison,' said Elf. 'I've see'd them. It's 'cos of that I'm frightened of them for Peterkin.'
That was not quite true. She had never thought of policemen till, unluckily, Clem spoke of them in his wish to comfort her. She did not mean to say what was not true, of course, but there never was such a child as Elf for arguing, even then when she was only four years old. Indeed, she's not half as bad now that she is...
'It's just because of that, that I'm so frightened about dear sweet little Peterkin,' she repeated.
'Rubbish, Elf,' I began, but Clem looked at me and I stopped.
'You needn't be frightened that Peterkin will be taken to prison, Elfie,' he said in his kind, rather slow way. 'It's only naughty little boys that the policemen take to prison, and Peterkin isn't naughty,' and then he wiped Elf's eyes again, and she forgot to go on crying, for just then nurse came upstairs. She was no...
He was a funny child; a queer child in some ways, I mean, and he still is. Mamma says it is stupid to say 'funny' when we mean queer or odd, but I think it says it better than any other word, and I am sure other children will think so too.
Blanche was the first to speak to nurse.
'Is mamma really frightened about Peterkin, nurse?' she asked. 'Tell us what it is.'
But nurse had caught sight of her darling pet baby's red eyes.
'Miss Blanchie,' she said, 'I asked you to look after Miss Elvira, and she's been crying.'
'You asked me to see that she didn't spill her tea, and she hasn't spilt it. It's some nonsense she has got in her head about policemen taking strayed children to prison that she has been crying about,' replied Blanche, rather crossly.
'I only wish,' began nurse, but the rest of her sentence she mumbled to herself, though I heard part of it. It was wishing that the policemen had got Peterkin safely.