er's?" asked Trouble, letting go his mother's
hand to pat the monkey.

"The barber's?" repeated Teddy, as he put Jack down on a box and gave the
pet a banana, as had been promised. "What made him think that?" Teddy
asked his mother.

"He's been singing that Mother Goose verse, 'Barber, barber! shave a pig.
How many hairs will make a wig? Four and twenty, that's enough, give the
barber a pinch of snuff.' I suppose Trouble thought maybe Snuff, the cat,
had something to do with a barber, and he got Jack mixed up in it
somehow. But I am glad you Curlytops are home again. I was getting
worried about you. What are you going to do now?"

"Teach Jack to jump off a high tower of boxes," explained Ted. "We were
getting ready to do that when the Italian took Jack. Come on, Janet,
we'll make the box tower."

"Me help!" cried Trouble.

"Oh, you'll be more bother than you will help," replied Janet. "You'll be
knocking the tower over all the while, or trying to climb up on it. You
go and play with Skyrocket and Turnover," she advised, as the dog and cat
came around the path.

"All wite! Me make Turn an' Sky do circus twicks!" said Trouble, talking
half to himself.

Having made sure that Jack was comfortable and had not been harmed by the
Italian who took him away, the Curlytops set about building, of old
packing boxes, the tower off which they hoped their monkey would leap,
thus doing a new trick for the pet circus. Teddy and Janet were so busy
they paid no attention to Trouble, except to notice, now and then, that
he was playing at the end of the yard with Skyrocket and Turnover, or
"Sky" and "Turn", as he shortened the pets' names.

"There, I guess the tower is high enough for the first few jumps," Teddy
remarked, as he nailed in place the last of the boxes. "We don't want
Jack to jump down from too high a place at first."

"No," agreed Janet, "we don't. He might hurt himself, or he might get
scared, and then he wouldn't want to be in the circus. But we ought to
have some sort of net for him to jump into, didn't we ought, Teddy?"

"I guess we did," said the Curlytop boy. "Then we can make the tower
higher. Oh, I know what we can have for a net!" he suddenly cried.

"What?" asked Janet.

Her brother pointed to a clothesline in the yard, across which were
drying some lace curtains that had just been washed.

"They'll be just dandy for a circus net!" Teddy went on. "You can hold
one end, and I'll hold the other. But we