oy did
not understand monkey talk.

"Oh, let me keep him!" the boy begged of his father.

"Well, I don't know," spoke the man, slowly. "A monkey is a queer sort
of a pet, and we haven't really any place for him."

"Oh, I'll make a place," the boy said. "Do let me keep him!"

"Well, you may try," his father said. "But if the circus men come back
after him, you'll have to give up your monkey. And he may run away, no
matter what sort of a cage you keep him in."

"Oh, I don't believe he will," the boy said.

So Mappo was taken home to the boy's house. It was quite different from
the circus where the merry little monkey had lived so long. There were
no sawdust rings, no horses or other animals, and there was no
performance in the afternoon, and none in the evening.

But, for all that, Mappo liked it. For one thing he got enough to eat,
and the things he liked--cocoanuts and bananas, for the boy read in a
book what monkeys liked, and got them for his new pet. The boy made a
nice box cage for Mappo to sleep in, and tied him fast with a string
around the collar, which Mappo wore.

"But I could easily loosen that string and get away if I wanted to,"
Mappo thought as he played with the knot in his odd little fingers.
Monkeys can untie most knots, and a chain is about the only thing that
will hold them.

The boy's mother was afraid of Mappo at first, but the little monkey was
so kind and gentle, that she grew to like him. And Mappo was a very good
monkey. He did not bite or scratch.

The house where the boy lived was quite different from the circus tent,
or the big barn where Mappo had first learned to do tricks. There was an
upstairs and downstairs to the house, and many windows. Mappo soon
learned to go up and down stairs very well indeed, and he liked nothing
better than to slide down the banisters. Sometimes he would climb up on
the gas chandelier and hang by his tail. This always made the boy laugh.

"See, my monkey can do tricks!" he would cry.

Then, one day, something sad happened. Mappo was sitting near the
dining-room window, which was open, and he was half asleep, for the sun
was very warm. The little monkey was dreaming, perhaps of the days when
he used to sleep in the tree-house in the jungle, or he may have been
thinking of the time when he went with the circus.

Suddenly he was awakened by hearing some music. He looked out in the
street, and there he saw a hand-organ man grinding away at the crank
wh