One day, a few weeks after, Mrs. Pepper and Polly were busy in the kitchen. Phronsie was out in the "orchard," as the one scraggy apple-tree was called by courtesy, singing her rag doll to sleep under its sheltering branches. But "Baby" was cross and wouldn't go to sleep, and Phronsie was on the point of giving up, and returning to the house, when a strain of music made her pause with dolly in her apron. There she stood with her finger in her mouth, in utter astonishment, wondering where the sweet sounds came from.
"Oh, Phronsie!" screamed Polly, from the back door, "where are--oh, here, come quick! it's the beau-ti-fullest!""What is it?" eagerly asked the little one, hopping over the stubby grass, leaving poor, discarded "Baby" on its snubby nose where it dropped in her hurry.
"Oh, a monkey!" cried Polly; "do hurry! the sweetest little monkey you ever saw!""What is a monkey?" asked Phronsie, skurrying after Polly to the gate where her mother was waiting for them.
"Why, a monkey's--a--monkey," explained Polly, "I don't know any better'n that. Here he is! Isn't he splendid!" and she lifted Phronsie up to the big post where she could see finely.
"O-oh! ow!" screamed little Phronsie, "see him, Polly! just see him!"A man with an organ was standing in the middle of the road playing away with all his might, and at the end of a long rope was a lively little monkey in a bright red coat and a smart cocked hat.
The little creature pulled off his hat, and with one long jump coming on the fence, he made Phronsie a most magnificent bow.
Strange to say, the child wasn't in the least frightened, but put out her little fat hand, speaking in gentle tones, "Poor little monkey! come here, poor little monkey!"
Turning up his little wrinkled face, and glancing fearfully at his master, Jocko began to grimace and beg for something to eat. The man pulled the string and struck up a merry tune, and in a minute the monkey spun around and around at such a lively pace, and put in so many queer antics that the little audience were fairly convulsed with laughter.
"I can't pay you," said Mrs. Pepper, wiping her eyes, when at last the man pulled up the strap whistling to Jocko to jump up, "but I'll give you something to eat; and the monkey, too, he shall have something for his pains in amusing my children."The man looked very cross when she brought him out only brown bread and two cold potatoes.
"Haven't you got nothin' better'n that?"
"It's as good as we have," answered Mrs. Pepper.
The man threw down the bread in the road. But Jocko thankfully ate his share, Polly and Phronsie busily feeding him; and then he turned and snapped up the portion his master had left in the dusty road.
Then they moved on, Mrs. Pepper and Polly going back to their work in the kitchen. A little down the road the man struck up another tune. Phronsie who had started merrily to tell "Baby" all about it, stopped a minute to hear, and--she didn't go back to the orchard!
About two hours after, Polly said merrily:
"I'm going to call Phronsie in, mammy; she must be awfully tired and hungry by this time."She sang gayly on the way, "I'm coming, Phronsie, coming--why, where!--" peeping under the tree.
