The Story of a Monkey on a Stick | Page 7

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.
CHAPTER IV
A QUEER RIDE
"Look out for the ink on the Doll's face," said the janitor to his little girl,
as he handed her the toy. "And see, the Monkey also has ink on the end
of his tail. I brought them home to you, to see if you could clean them."

"Oh, then I can't keep them!" exclaimed the little girl in a sad voice.
"And they are so cute, too, even if they are covered with ink! How did
it happen?"
"A water pipe burst in the school, and there was so much running
around that an ink bottle in the teacher's desk got upset, I suppose, and
then the ink splashed on the Monkey and the Doll," said the janitor.
"But how did they get in