in another
few seconds, but Teddy, rushing after him, looked and made sure it really
was Jack that the organ player had with him. There was a queer little
tuft of white hair on the end of Jack's tail, and this monkey had the
same mark.

"Jack! Jack!" cried Teddy. "Come on, to me! I'll give you all the bananas
you want!"

"Dis-a my monk!" jabbered the Italian.

"He is not! He's ours!" declared Janet, as she hurried up to the side of
her brother. "Make him give back our monkey that we got from Uncle Toby!"
she appealed to Mr. Anderson.

"If he doesn't," said the grocer, "I'll call a policeman and----"

But just then Jack acted for himself. With a shrill chatter he broke
loose from the string that was tied to the collar about his neck. There
had been no cord on him when he was eating a banana in the yard of the
Curlytops, and the hand-organ man must have tied it there after he took
the children's pet. Once free, Jack made one leap and landed safe in
Teddy's arms.

Now, Jack was rather a large monkey, and, jumping from a distance, as
Jack did, he knocked Teddy over. Flat down on the sidewalk sat Teddy, the
monkey clinging with its hairy arms about the little boy's neck.

"Oh! Oh!" exclaimed Janet, and then she stopped, for she did not know
what else to say.

"Look out!" cried Mr. Anderson. "Maybe that's a savage monkey, and he'll
bite you!"

"This is Jack all right," declared Teddy. "I know him and he knows me. He
didn't hurt me. I--I just sat down, that's all," and the little Curlytop
boy laughed.

Jack chattered, clung tighter to his master, and then the crowd that had
gathered also laughed. For it looked so odd to see Teddy sitting on the
sidewalk, with a monkey, quite a large one, clinging to his neck.

"What's the matter here? What's the trouble?" asked a gruff but not
unkindly voice, and on the outside of the crowd appeared Policeman
Cassidy.

"Oh, Cassidy," said Mr. Anderson, "this Italian took the Curlytops'
monkey, and they just got him back--I mean they got the monkey back. The
Italian----"

But with a half-smothered cry of anger, the Italian started to run down
the street, his hand-organ swaying from side to side on his back. He had
no wish to meet Policeman Cassidy and be arrested for having taken Jack.

And that is just what the Italian had done. He had sneaked into the yard
and, seeing the monkey unfastened and eating a banana, had picked up the
pet and hurried off with him. The Italian must