you know his name was Stubbs?" asked Ben, after he had
recovered his breath.

"Oh, I don't know that that is his real name," was the quick reply; "I
only call him that because he looks so much like a feller with that name
that I knew at home. He don't seem to mind because I call him Stubbs."

Ben looked at Toby earnestly for a moment, acting all the time as if
he wanted to laugh again, but didn't dare to, for fear he might burst a
blood vessel; and then he said, as he patted him on the shoulder: "Well,
you are the queerest little fish that I ever saw in all my travels. You
seem to think that that monkey knows all you say to him."

"I'm sure he does," said Toby, positively. "He don't say anything right
out to me, but he knows everything I tell him. Do you suppose he could
talk if he tried to?"

"Look here, Mr. Toby Tyler"--and Ben turned half around in his seat
and looked Toby full in the face, so as to give more emphasis to his
words--"are you heathen enough to think that that monkey could talk if
he wanted to?"

"I know I hain't a heathen," said Toby, thoughtfully, "for if I had been
some of the missionaries would have found me out a good while ago; but
I never saw anybody like this old Mr. Stubbs before, an' I thought he
could talk if he wanted to, just as the Living Skeleton does, or his
wife. Anyhow, Mr. Stubbs winked at me; an' how could he do that if he
didn't know what I've been sayin' to him?"

"Look here, my son," said Ben, in a most fatherly fashion, "monkeys
hain't anything but beasts, an' they don't know how to talk any more
than they know what you say to 'em."

"Didn't you ever hear any of them speak a word?"

"Never. I've been in a circus, man an' boy, nigh on to forty years, an'
I never seen nothin' in a monkey more 'n any other beast, except their
awful mischiefness."

"Well," said Toby, still unconvinced, "I believe Mr. Stubbs knows what I
say to him, anyway."

"Now don't be foolish, Toby," pleaded Ben. "You can't show me one thing
that a monkey ever did because you told him to."

Just at this moment Toby felt someone pulling at the back of his coat,
and, looking round, he saw it was a little brown hand, reaching through
the bars of the air hole of the cage, that was tugging away at his coat.

"There!" he said, triumphantly, to Ben. "Look there! I told Mr. Stubbs
if he wanted anything more to eat, to tell me an' I would give it to
him. Now you can see for yourself that he's come for it." A