CHAPTER III 

   

THE JANITOR'S HOUSE

"There you are! Oh, how funny you look!" chattered the Monkey on a Stick in a whisper to the Cotton Doll, as they were both shut up together in the teacher's desk. "You don't know how funny you look! If I only had a looking-glass I'd show you!"

"I don't care! I think you're real mean!" said the Cotton Doll. "Don't you dare put any more ink on me!"

"I guess I've got enough on you now!" laughed the Monkey. "There's a spot on your nose, one on your chin, and one on each of your cheeks." As he spoke the Monkey put the cork back in the ink bottle and wiped the inky end of his tail off on a piece of blotting paper in the desk.

"What's that you say?" cried the Cotton Doll. "Did you dare put ink on my nose, on my chin and my cheeks?"

"That's what I did, just for fun!" chattered the mischievous Monkey. And, really, he had done just that. Oh, he was a regular "cut-up" when he was by himself, that Monkey was.

"I must look terrible!" said the poor Cotton Doll, and, raising her hands, she rubbed them over her face. She felt the wet spots where the Monkey had daubed her with ink.

"Oh! aren't you mean?" cried the Cotton Doll. "My little girl mistress will never like me again when the teacher gives me back to her. I'm all spoiled!"

"No, you just look funny!" laughed the Monkey. "You looked funny when I put ink spots on you, but now you look funnier than ever, 'cause you've spread the ink all around, and made big splotches of it. Oh, my! Excuse me while I laugh!" he cried, and he wiggled and twisted around on the bottom of the drawer, laughing in whispers at the funny look on the face of the Cotton Doll.

"You're too mean for anything!" said the Doll to the Monkey, and she was almost ready to cry. But she happened to think that if she shed any tears they would wash down through the ink on her cheeks and make her look queerer than ever. So she did not cry.

"I'm never going to speak to you again, so there!" exclaimed the Cotton Doll, and she would have stamped her foot if there had been room for her to stand up in the desk drawer--which there wasn't. So she just banged her heels on the bottom of it.

"Oh, I'll be good!" promised the Monkey. "I won't put any more ink on you, and I'll see if I can get some of it off on this piece of blotting paper. I blotted my tail on it."

He tried to clean the Doll's face, but, by this time, the ink had dried, and you know how hard it is to get dried ink off your fingers after you have written a letter. Well, it was this way with the Cotton Doll. The ink stayed on her face.

"Well, if you have ink on your face I've also got some on the end of my tail, where I dipped it into the bottle," said the Monkey chap, thinking to cheer up the Doll by this.

"Yes, but the ink doesn't show on your brown tail as it does on my white face," said the Doll. "However, there is no use crying over spilled milk, I suppose," she went on. "Only if you do such a thing again I'll never speak to you as long as I live!"

"I'll never do it again," said the Monkey in a sorrowful voice. "Now let's have some fun. You tell me some of your adventures and I'll tell you some of mine. Did you ever live in a store?"

"Oh, yes, that's where I came from," answered the Doll.

"And was there a Calico Clown in your store, who was always asking what it was that made more noise than a pig under a gate?" asked the Monkey.

"No. But there was a Jumping Jack who was always trying to see how high he could kick, and one day he nearly kicked my hat off," said the Cotton Doll. "But tell me, please, some of your adventures."

The Monkey was just starting to tell how the Calico Clown's red and yellow trousers were burned in the gas jet one day, when, all of a sudden, there was a great noise and commotion in the schoolroom. The Monkey and the Doll could not tell what had caused it, though the Monkey did try to look out through the keyhole.

"Can you see anything?" asked the Doll.

"I can see some water dripping down," answered the long-tailed chap, "and the teacher and the children are running around as fast as anything."

"Oh, I wonder what has happened!" exclaimed the Doll. And just then she and the Monkey on a Stick heard the teacher say:

"Run out quickly, children! Run out, all of you. A water pipe has burst and there's a regular rain storm inside our nice schoolroom."

"Please can't I have my Monkey on a Stick before I go out?" asked Herbert. "You put him in your desk, Teacher!"

"And I want my knife you took away, please!" called another boy.

"We have no time for those things, now," the teacher said. "The water is coming down fast, and we'll all be wet through if we stay. The Monkey, knife and other things will be all right in my desk. Get your hats, and pass out quickly. More pipes may burst and flood the school.

"Go home, children, all of you," said the teacher. "To-morrow the pipes will be mended, and, if the school is dry enough, we will go on with our lessons. But run home now."

You may well imagine that most of the boys and girls were glad of the holiday that had come to them so unexpectedly. But Herbert felt sorry; that he had to leave his Monkey on a Stick in school. When he reached home he acted so strangely that his mother wanted to know what the matter was.

Of course Herbert had to tell that he had taken his Monkey to school, and he also had to tell what had happened afterward.

"Of course you did wrong," said Herbert's mother, "and you must suffer a little punishment."

"What kind of punishment?" asked Herbert.

"The punishment of not having your Monkey," was the answer.

And now we must see what happened to the Monkey on a Stick.

"What do you imagine will happen next?" asked the Doll of the Monkey, for they had heard what had been said.

"I don't know," was the answer. "But if we are left alone here in the room we can get out of the desk and have some fun."

"Oh, so we can!" cried the Doll. "I'm tired of being shut up here. Can you open the desk, Mr. Monkey?"

"I think so," was the reply.

The Monkey was just going to raise the lid, by prying under it with the long stick up and down which he climbed, when, all of a sudden, there was a noise in the room.

"Some one is coming!" whispered the Doll.

"I hear them," said the Monkey. He looked out through the keyhole and saw a man wading through the water toward the desk. "I guess it's the night watchman," went on the Monkey in a whisper.

"We don't have a night watchman in school," whispered back the Doll. "But we have a janitor. Maybe it's the janitor coming."

And so it was. The janitor had shut off some of the water in the broken pipes, and he was going about from room to room to see how much damage had been done. He walked up to the desk inside of which the Monkey and Doll had been placed.

"Well, I do declare!" exclaimed the janitor, and the Monkey and the Doll heard him. "There's ink running out of the drawer of the teacher's desk! Ink running out of her desk, and water running out of the broken pipes! Sure the school had bad luck to-day! But I must see about this ink. It may spoil everything in the drawer. The bottle must have been upset and the cork came out when the teacher and children were running around after the pipes burst."

The Monkey turned away from the keyhole and looked at the bottle of ink. Surely enough, it lay on its side, and the cork was out. A stream of black liquid was running out of the bottle, dripping down through a crack in the teacher's desk.

"Oh, do you suppose you did that?" asked the Doll in a whisper of the Monkey.

"I--I guess maybe I did," he answered. "After I dipped my tail in the ink and marked your face, maybe I didn't put the cork back in tightly enough. And when I jumped around, to see what all the racket was about, I must have knocked the bottle over."

The janitor opened the lid of the desk, at the same time saying:

"I'd better take the teacher's things out and keep them for her until morning. What with the ink and water, everything may be spoiled."

A bright light shone in on the Monkey and the Doll when the top of the desk was opened by the janitor. Of course both the toys kept very still as soon as the janitor looked at them. This was the rule, as I have told you in the other books.

It did not take the school janitor long to cork the ink bottle and stop any more of the black fluid running out.

"Well, well!" said the janitor, looking at the ink-splashed Doll and the ink-tipped Monkey. "I'll take these two toys home and maybe my little girl can clean them. Then I'll bring them back to school to-morrow, and the teacher can give them to whoever owns them. Yes, I'll take the Monkey and Doll home to my house."

And this the janitor did. He stuffed the Monkey on a Stick, and also the Cotton Doll, into his pocket, taking care, of course, not to break them, and then, having cleaned from the room as much of the water as he could, the janitor went home.

"Look what I've brought you," he said to his little girl, as he took the Monkey and the Doll out of his pocket on reaching home.

"Oh, aren't they funny!" cried the little girl, dancing up and down. "May I have them to keep?"

"Gracious me! what is going to happen now?" thought the Monkey on a Stick.