uy it, as he thought he
should soon get tired of laughing at any thing, if it was ever so
droll.

Shallow was sure that he should never get tired of laughing at so
very droll a thing as the grinning monkey; and he decided to buy
it, if Wise would give him half of his money; and so Wise did.

Selfish found a rattle, a large, noisy rattle, and went to
springing it until they were all tired of hearing the noise.

"I think I shall buy this," said he. "I can make believe that there
is a fire, and can run about springing my rattle, and crying,
'Fire! Fire!' or I can play that a thief is breaking into a store,
and can rattle my rattle at him, and call out, 'Stop thief!'"

"But that will disturb all the people in the house," said Wise.

"What care I for that?" said Selfish.

Selfish found that the price of his rattle was not so much as the
half dollar; so he laid out the rest of it in cake, and sat down on
a box, and began to eat it.

Wise passed by all the images and gaudy toys, only good to look at
a few times, and chose a soft ball, and finding that that did not
take all of his half of the money, he purchased a little morocco
box with an inkstand, some wafers, and one or two short pens in
it. Shallow told him that was not a plaything; it was only fit for
a school; and as to his ball, he did not think much of that.

Wise said he thought they could all play with the ball a great many
times, and he thought, too, that he should like his little inkstand
rainy days and winter evenings.

So the boys walked along home. Shallow stopped every moment to
laugh at his monkey, and Selfish to spring his rattle; and they
looked with contempt on Wise's ball, which he carried quietly in
one hand, and his box done up in brown paper in the other.

When they got home, Shallow ran in to show his monkey. The people
smiled a little, but did not take much notice of it; and, in fact,
it did not look half so funny, even to himself, as it did in the
shop. In a short time, it did not make him laugh at all, and then
he was vexed and angry with it. He said he meant to go and throw
the ugly old baboon away; he was tired of seeing that same old grin
on his face all the time. So he went and threw it over the wall.

Selfish ate his cake up, on his way home. He would