Finally, having thoroughly investigated the top of the tent, several of the larger simians decided to take a closer look at the audience.At the moment the audience did not know of this plan, or they might have taken measures to protect themselves.
The first intimation they had of the plans of the mischievous monkeys, was when a woman uttered a piercing shriek, startling everyone in the tent.
"What is it?" shouted someone.
"Oh, my hat! My hat!" she cried after discovering what had happened to her.
The eyes of the audience wandered from her up to where a monkey was dangling by its tail far above their heads.The animal had in its hands a flower-covered hat, so large that when the monkey tried to put it on, it almost entirely concealed his body.So suddenly had the hat been torn from the head of the owner that hatpins were broken short off while the little thief "shinned" a rope with his prize.
Failing to make the hat fit, Mr.Monkey began pulling the flowers out; then picking them to pieces, he showered the particles down over the heads of the audience.
This was great sport for the monkey, but no fun at all for the owner of the hat.The woman hurried from her seat, red-faced and humiliated.Phil Forrest had chanced to be a witness to the act.He stepped forward as she descended to the concourse and touched his hat.
"Was the hat a valuable one, madam?" he asked."Very.""I am sorry.If you will come with me to the office of the manager I am quite sure he will make good your loss.""Do you belong to the circus, sir?" "I do."The woman gladly accompanied him to Mr.Sparling, and there was made happy by having the price of her ruined hat handed over to her without a word of objection.
In the meantime trouble had been multiplying at a very rapid rate under the big top.Everyone was shouting, attendants were yelling orders to each other, and now Mr.Sparling, hurrying in, added his voice to the din.
Hats in all parts of the tent seemed to fly toward the roof almost magically, to come tumbling down a few minutes later hopeless wrecks.
Once the monkeys got a tall silk hat.This they used for an aerial football, tossing it to each other as they leaped from rope to rope at their dizzy height.
One monkey was discovered peering down at a certain point in theaudience with an almost fascinated gaze.Something down there attracted him.Cautiously the little fellow let himself down a rope to the side wall, then, unnoticed by the people, crept down through the aisle.Slowly one black little hand reached up and jerked from the head of an old gentleman a pair of gold spectacles.
The man uttered a yell as he felt the spectacles being torn from him, and made a frantic effort to save them.But the glasses, in the hands of the monkey, were already halfway up the aisle and a moment more the monkey was twisting the bows into hard knots and hurling pieces of glass at the spectators.
"Catch them!Catch them!" shouted Mr.Sparling."How, how?" answered a showman.
"Somebody--"
"I'll go up and get them," spoke up Teddy Tucker.Teddy simply could not keep out of trouble.He was sure to be in the thick of it whenever a disturbance was abroad.
