JUMPO AND THE TALCUM POWDER
Jumpo Kinkytail was home all alone in the cute little monkey-house in the top of the tree, so the mosquitoes couldn't get in unless they flew very high. And I'm going to tell you the true and only reason why Jumpo was home alone.
It was because his mamma had gone down to the five and ten-cent store to get a new piano with a dishpan on top, so she could wash her dishes and play the piano at the same time. And Jacko was at school, but Jumpo had been kept home because he had a cold.
"So you will be in charge of the house while I am away," said his mamma, as she started for the five and ten-cent store.
"All right, and I'll take good care of the house," said Jumpo. And he felt quite pleased to think that he was old enough to take care of a whole big house all by himself.
"I wonder what I can do to make the time pass quickly until Jacko comes home from school," thought Jumpo as he looked out of the window. "It's a bit lonesome, so I guess I'll dust some of the furniture for mamma."
He took a dust rag in each of his two front paws, and also one in his kinkytail, making three in all, and he went about the rooms knocking the dust off the furniture on to the floor, where no one would see it.
When Jumpo got tired of that he read a story book. He read about a big giant with a blue nose and how one day a yellow dwarf saw the giant asleep and painted his nose green and the birds used to think the nose was grass and they would nestle down on the giant and tickle him so that he sneezed like thunder booming in the sky.
"Well, it will be an hour yet before mamma or Jacko comes home," said Jumpo, as he looked at the clock after finishing the story. "What can I do next?" So he looked around but he couldn't see anything, and he was just going to knock some more dust off the furniture, when he heard some one crying out-of-doors.
"My! I wonder who that can be?" he thought. So he looked down from the front porch, and there on the ground at the foot of the tree was Buddy Pigg, the little guinea pig boy. And he was crying very hard.
"What's the matter?" asked Jumpo.
"Oh, a big mosquito has bitten me!" said Buddy, "and my leg is all swelling up from it, so that I can hardly walk."
"Oh, that's too bad," said Jumpo. "Come up here and I will put some stuff on to make it better."
"I can't climb that high tree," said Buddy, sad like.
"No more you can!" exclaimed Jumpo. "Wait a minute."
So Jumpo let down a basket fastened to a string and Buddy got in it—I mean he got in the basket, not the string, you understand, of course. Then Jumpo pulled him up.
"Now let's see where that mosquito bite is," said the monkey boy, and Buddy showed him. "I should say it was a big one!" cried Jumpo. "That needs some witch hazel on it right away."
Well, Jumpo put a lot of witch hazel on the bite, but that only seemed to make it worse.
"I know what's good for it," said Buddy. "It's some stuff my mamma uses."
"What is it?" asked Jumpo.
"Talcum powder," replied the guinea pig. "It's a white, smooth powder, and it comes in a tin box and smells nice."
"What smells, the powder or the box?" asked Jumpo.
"The powder smells, of course," said Buddy. "Have you any?"
"Yes, I guess so," answered Jumpo. "Let's look in the bathroom. Mother isn't home to-day," so into the bathroom those two animal boys went, and they hunted all over for the talcum powder.
"There it is, up on that shelf!" said Buddy at last. "I can tell by the cover of the box. You just get it down and smell of it."
So Jumpo curled up his tail, reached it up and wound it around the box just as an elephant in the circus winds his trunk around a peanut, and the monkey boy lifted down the talcum powder box.
"How does it smell?" asked Buddy.
"Fine!" said Jumpo. "Have a smell yourself. It's talcum powder, all right."
So they decided that it was, but when Jumpo tried to get some powder out none would come. There were little holes in the top of the box, but they were stopped up somehow or other, and there poor Buddy was suffering from the mosquito bite, and they couldn't get powder to put on it.
"I know what I'll do!" exclaimed Jumpo. "I'll just take off the whole cover and then the powder will come out fine."
So he sat down on the bathroom floor beside Buddy, and they both tried to get the cover off the box. But it was on very tight, and at last Jumpo said:
"I'm going to knock it off with the hair brush!"
So he pounded on the top of the tin talcum powder box. Once, twice, three times he pounded and then, all of a sudden—
"Piff! Paff! Poof!" The air was full of a fine, white powder just like snow. It drifted and sifted all over the bathroom, and scattered itself all over Buddy and Jumpo. Into their fur it went, all over Jumpo's fuzzy little face, and even down to his hairy paws. And Buddy was just as bad. You see the cover came off the box so quickly that they didn't either of them have time to get out of the way.
But, oh, goodness! You should have seen that bathroom.
There was a pile of talcum powder on the floor, and some in the bathtub, and some in the wash basin, and some on the towel rack, and even on the hair brush, just as if it had been painted white; what do you think of that?
"Oh, just look at yourself!" cried Buddy to Jumpo. "You look like a snow man!"
"And look at yourself!" said Jumpo. "You look like a fuzzy, white, woolly dog."
"But it smells good!" cried Buddy, "and my mosquito bite is all better."
"And I guess we'd better try to scoop up some of this powder before my mother comes home," said Jumpo. So he and Buddy were brushing it up off the floor when, all at once, the front door opened, and in came Mrs. Kinkytail. She saw the two white, powder-covered little animal boys and she screamed:
"Oh my! What has happened! Fire! Police! Burglars! Who are those two queer white things in my bathroom? Where is my little boy Jumpo? Has some one taken him?"
"Here I am!" cried Jumpo, with a laugh, for his mamma really didn't know him, all white as he was. And she didn't know Buddy, either.
"Are you sure it's you, Jumpo, and not a white rabbit?" she asked, after a while.
"Oh, yes, mamma," he said, "I was putting some talcum powder on Buddy's mosquito bite and—and—and the cover came off all at once."
"Off the box, not off my bite," said Buddy, careful-like.
"Oh, I see!" exclaimed Mrs. Kinkytail with a laugh. "Well, I hope the bite is better? And now I must get the whisk broom, and dust the powder off you boys! Oh, what sights you are!"
But they were soon clean and they smelled like perfume for a long time after that, and the next time Jumpo wanted talcum powder he asked his mamma for it, and he didn't try to open the box himself.
Now, if the bottle of perfume doesn't spill itself into the bathtub and make a smell like a pocket handkerchief, I'll tell you next about Jacko washing the dishes.