CHAPTER II

THE MONKEY AT SCHOOL

"Well, children, why aren't you eating breakfast?" a voice asked, and Herbert, turning around, saw his mother. The Monkey on a Stick, who, if he could not talk or do any tricks just then, could use his eyes, saw a pleasant-faced lady entering the room. She was smiling at Madeline, who had her Candy Rabbit in her hands, and at Herbert.

"Oh, look, Mother, what I found at my plate!" exclaimed Herbert, and he pulled the string, and made the Monkey run up and down the stick. "It's my birthday present!"

"Yes, Daddy said he was going to get you something," said Mother. "It came from the store late yesterday afternoon, and I put it away, and had it laid at your breakfast place this morning. Do you like it?"

"Oh, it's dandy!" exclaimed Herbert. "I love it!"

The children sat down and had an orange and some oatmeal and a glass of milk and a roll with golden yellow butter on it. But of course the Monkey and the Candy Rabbit had nothing to eat. They did not want anything. Being toys, you see, they did not have to eat. Though, at times, they could eat certain things if they wished.

Madeline kept her Candy Rabbit near her plate. All of a sudden, as the little girl was eating, she dropped her spoon in her oatmeal dish, and a drop of milk spattered into the glass eye of the Candy Rabbit.

"Oh, look what you did!" exclaimed Herbert, who saw what had happened. "You'll blind your Rabbit."

"Oh, my poor Rabbit!" said Madeline, and, with her napkin, she carefully wiped the drop of milk out of the Rabbit's eye. And the Bunny never even blinked. That's what it is to be a Candy Rabbit, and have glass eyes. Not all of us are as lucky as that, are we?

A little later Herbert dropped a piece of his buttered roll. It fell near the Monkey, who was lying on the table near the breakfast plate of the little boy. Some of the butter from the roll stuck to the stick which the Monkey climbed up and down.

"Now look what you did, Herbert!" said Madeline. "You'll make the stick so slippery with butter that the Monkey may fall off."

"Come, children," called Mother, as she again entered the room. "You must finish your breakfast and go to school. Put your Monkey back in the box, Herbert. Don't be late for school."

"No'm, we won't!" promised the brother and sister.

A little later they were on their way, walking side by side on the path that led to the red school house down by the white bridge. Madeline looked at her brother curiously as they came near the building where they studied their lessons.

"Have you got your books under your coat, Herbert?" asked Madeline.

"No, I haven't my books," he said.

"Well, what have you?" asked Madeline. "You have _something_, for I can see a lump. What is it?"

Before Herbert could answer, if he had wanted to, the bell rang and the two children, and some others who were straggling along, had to run so they would not be late. Then, for a time, Madeline forgot what it was her brother was bringing to school under his coat.

Just before recess, his teacher, looking down toward Herbert, sitting near Dick and Arnold, called out:

"What have you there, Herbert? What are you showing to the other boys under your desk?"

"It--it's a Monkey!" answered Madeline's brother.

"A _monkey_!" exclaimed the teacher.

"Yes. It's my birthday Monkey," went on the little boy.

"Oh! A birthday monkey!" the teacher said again. "I think I had better call the janitor and have him take care of your monkey for you," and she started toward the door.

"Oh, no'm! He isn't a live monkey," said Herbert. "He's just a toy one, on a stick."

"Herbert, you may bring me that Monkey," the teacher said, and Herbert, very red in the face, walked up to the platform on which stood his teacher's desk. In his hand Herbert carried his Monkey on a Stick.

"Where did you get this?" his teacher asked, as she took the toy from Herbert and laid it on top of her desk.

"I got it for my birthday," he answered. "This morning."

"But why did you bring it to school?" went on the teacher. "You are nearly always a good boy. Why did you bring your Monkey to school, Herbert?"

"Oh, I--I just wanted to show him to Arnold and Dick," was the answer. "We're going to have a show, and my Monkey is going to be in it. I brought him to school under my coat!"

"Oh! Oh!" exclaimed Madeline, before she thought what she was saying. "I saw something under his coat, and I thought it was his books. Oh! Oh! And it was his Monkey!"

All the children laughed when Madeline said this, and even the teacher could not help smiling. But she said:

"Silence, please, children. We must keep on with our lessons. And, Herbert, it was wrong of you to bring your Monkey to school and take him out to show to other boys. As a little punishment I shall keep your toy in my desk until after school to-night. Then you may have him back."

"Yes'm," returned Herbert, still rather red in the face. He went back to his desk, and the other children went on with their lessons.

The teacher put the Monkey on a Stick inside a big drawer.

"Well, this is the first of my adventures since I went to sleep in the store and awakened in Herbert's house," thought the Monkey to himself, as he found that he was shut up inside the teacher's desk. "I wondered what Herbert was going to do with me when he slipped me under his coat at the breakfast table. Now I must see what we have here."

It was not very dark inside the drawer of the teacher's desk. Enough light came through the keyhole for the Monkey to see, and, among other things, he noticed a bottle of ink and a small Doll. He was pleased to see the Doll.

"Oh, here is a toy like myself!" said the Monkey, speaking in a whisper. "How do you do?" he went on, sitting up and bowing to his new acquaintance. "Are you any relation to the Sawdust Doll?" he asked politely.

"I'm a second or third cousin," was the answer. "She is stuffed with sawdust, but I am stuffed with cotton."

"Then I will call you Miss Cotton Doll," went on the Monkey. "What brought you here? Were you so bad in school that you had to be shut up in a desk?"

"No, not exactly. But a little girl named Mary brought me in her school bag yesterday, and she took me out in the study hour, and the teacher said it was wrong. So she took me away from the little girl named Mary."

"I thought Mary brought a lamb to school," said the Monkey on a Stick, who, having lived in a toy store, of course knew all about toy books and Mother Goose verses.

"That was another Mary," went on the Cotton Doll. "Besides Mary didn't _bring_ the lamb to school, it _followed_ her one day."

"Oh, so it did--I had forgotten," went on the Monkey.

"But my Mary _brought_ me to school," said the Cotton Doll, "and her teacher took me away. She put me in this desk drawer; the teacher did."

"Well, now we're here, let's have some fun," said the Monkey to the Cotton Doll after a bit. "We are all alone by ourselves, and we can do as we please. Let's look around and play. We can't stand up, as the drawer isn't high enough, but we can crawl on our knees. Let's see what else is here."

"All right," agreed the Cotton Doll. So while the teacher was hearing the lessons of Herbert, Madeline and the other boys and girls, the Monkey (crawling off his stick for the time being) and the Cotton Doll went creeping on their hands and knees around the drawer.

"Let's look in the bottle of ink," proposed the Monkey, as he crawled near it, and began pulling at the cork.

"Oh, don't do that!" cried the Cotton Doll, in a whisper, of course. "Don't open it! You'll get all black!"

"Oh, if it's black ink, I know what we can do!" said the Monkey. "We can black up like colored minstrels, and have a little show in here by ourselves. I'll black your face with the ink, and you can black mine, though I am pretty brown now."

"But I don't want my face blacked with ink!" cried the Cotton Doll, as the Monkey took the cork from the bottle. "I don't want to be a minstrel!"

"Oh, but you must!" insisted the Monkey, laughing, and, catching hold of the Cotton Doll in one hand, he tilted up the ink bottle in the other, and dipped in the end of his tail.

"Now I'll paint you nice and black!" he laughed.

"Oh, don't! Please don't!" begged the Cotton Doll, as she tried to get away from the Monkey. But she couldn't, for he held her tightly, and the inky end of the tail was coming nearer and nearer to her face.