SLIDER GOES SLIDING
Teddy and Janet, sleeping in their rooms on the side of their house nearest to the home of Mrs. Blake, were the first to be awakened by the screams of the frightened lady. For that Mrs. Blake was frightened anyone could tell who heard her cry.
"Come and take the fuzzy burglar! Take the fuzzy burglar out of my room!" she exclaimed again and again.
By this time Teddy had jumped out of his bed and had run to his window. At the same time Janet, in the next room, had jumped out of her bed and had run to her window. Both children looked across the yard to the home of Mrs. Blake. They could see her, in the moonlight, standing at her window.
"What's the matter, Curlytops?" called their mother, across the hall. She had been awakened, not so much by the cries of Mrs. Blake as by the movements of Ted and Janet. "What's the matter?" asked Mrs. Martin.
"There's a funny burglar over in Mrs. Blake's house, and she wants someone to come and get it," answered Janet.
"No, she didn't say funny burglar—she said fuzzy!" declared Ted.
"Well, anyhow, it's a burglar," declared Janet.
And from the other house again came the appeal:
"Patrick! Mary Ann! Mr. Martin! Somebody! Come and get the fuzzy burglar!"
By this time Mr. Martin, who had gotten up, had been told by his wife that something was wrong in Mrs. Blake's house. He put on some clothes and hurried downstairs, carrying a flashlight in one hand and his revolver in the other.
"Oh!" exclaimed Janet, who, with Teddy, watched her father go, "Daddy's going to shoot the funny burglar."
"Fuzzy burglar!" corrected Ted.
But Janet had covered her ears with her hands, so she would not hear her father shoot his revolver—in case he found anything to shoot at—so the little girl did not hear what her brother said.
Mr. Martin ran across the lawn to the front porch of Mrs. Blake's house. By this time several other neighbors had been awakened be the lady's screams, and some of the men came out, partly dressed, to see what was going on.
"Come in, Mr. Martin," said Patrick, as he opened the door for the father of the Curlytops. Patrick was Mrs. Blake's gardener.
"What is it, Patrick?" asked Mr. Martin, holding his revolver in one hand and the flashlight in the other. "Where is the burglar?"
"I didn't see anything, Mr. Martin," answered the gardener. "I heard Mrs. Blake scream, and I got up, and so did Mary Ann, the cook, but we can't find anything!"
"But there is a burglar here!" said Mrs. Blake from the head of the stairs, where she now stood. "I was awakened by a noise in my room, and when I looked at the window, I saw in the moonlight, sitting on the sill, a fuzzy little old man. He's a burglar, I'm sure of it, and I wish the police would come!"
"I think there are enough of us here now, Mrs. Blake, to look after two or three burglars without the police," said Mr. Martin, as he glanced at several neighbors who had come in. "Let's have a look around," he went on. "I fancy, if there was a burglar, that he has gotten away by this time."
"I hope he has gotten away, and will never come back," said Mrs. Blake. "But I wish you gentlemen would look, just the same."
So Mr. Martin and the other men neighbors, with Patrick, the gardener, to help, began a search of the house. They went to Mrs. Blake's room first.
"I don't see any burglar," said Mr. Martin. He did not need his electric flashlight now, as the house had been lighted from top to bottom by Mrs. Blake's two servants.
"There he is! There he is!" suddenly cried Mrs. Blake. "Under that big chair. There's the fuzzy burglar!"
Mr. Martin and two or three other men rushed over to the chair at which Mrs. Blake pointed. Mr. Martin stooped down, and then he laughed.
"What's the matter?" asked Mr. Tyndall, a neighbor from across the street.
"I'll show you," answered Mr. Martin, as he thrust his arm under the chair. "Come out of there, Jack!" he went on, and out from beneath the chair he pulled—Jack, Uncle Toby's pet monkey! Poor Jack was as much frightened as Mrs. Blake had been, but he cowered down in Mr. Martin's arms and looked up into the face of the father of the Curlytops as if saying:
"Please don't whip me! I didn't mean to be bad!"
The men who had come in to help hunt a burglar looked at the fuzzy monkey in Mr. Martin's arms, and then burst out laughing.
"Yes, it must have been him that I saw perched on my window," said Mrs. Blake. "In my alarm, it did look like a fuzzy, little old man, and of course I thought it was a burglar. I was foolish. It was a very small burglar. I didn't know you kept monkeys, Mr. Martin."
"I only keep one," he said, "and I don't exactly keep that, myself. It's one of the children's pets. It used to belong to my Uncle Toby, and we just brought Jack home this afternoon. We put him in the barn with the white mice and the alligator——"
"Don't tell me there's an alligator running around loose!" cried Mrs. Blake. "Oh, a monkey is bad enough, but an alligator——"
"It's only a little one," said Mr. Martin. "And I'm sorry Jack got loose and frightened you. I'll see, after this, that the pets don't get out at night."
"Oh, I'm sure I don't want to spoil the children's pleasure in the least," went on Mrs. Blake. "But I didn't know you had such a menagerie next door to me, Mr. Martin."
"We didn't have until to-day—or rather, yesterday, for it is now past midnight," Mr. Martin explained. "My Uncle Toby left me his collection of animals when he went away suddenly, and Ted and Janet say they are going to have a circus."
"Save me a ticket!" cried Mr. Hanson, who lived two or three houses down the street.
"And I want one," added Mr. Fenton. "If the Curlytops give a circus I want to come to it!"
"So do it!" cried several other neighbors, who had turned out to see what all the excitement was about.
"I'll tell Teddy and Janet," promised Mr. Martin, as he carried Jack out of Mrs. Blake's house, much to the relief of that lady, though she was rather fond of animals in general.
So the excitement quieted down, and after it was all over a policeman came along, one of the neighbors having telephoned in the first alarm. But there was nothing for the officer to do.
"Now, Curlytops," said Mr. Martin, at breakfast the next morning when the excitement of the night was being talked over, "if you are to keep Uncle Toby's pets here, we must be careful that they do not bother the neighbors. Your own dog and cat are very good, and make no trouble. But with a monkey, a parrot, another dog and cat, to say nothing of the alligator and the white mice, we may cause a lot of trouble to our good neighbors. And we wouldn't want to do that."
"What do you want us to do, Daddy?" asked Ted. He had just fed the two dogs—Skyrocket and Top, while Janet had poured out some milk for Turnover and Snuff, the two cats.
"We must make cages that can be locked at night, or else we must make sure that the barn is tightly closed," said his father. "I don't suppose, during the day, that there will be much trouble. It is at night we must be careful. No one likes to be awakened by seeing a monkey on the window sill."
"I wouldn't care," said Teddy.
"Well, ladies like Mrs. Blake don't care for such thrills," returned Mr. Martin, with a laugh. "So we must be sure that all the members of our menagerie are safely caged each night. I shall depend on you Curlytops for that."
"We'll be careful!" promised Teddy.
"I'll help you lock up every night," added Janet.
"Well, then I will leave the pets to you Curlytops," said their father. "It is on your account that your mother and I are keeping them instead of selling them, and while they will be some care, we do not mind if you do your share."
"The first thing I'm going to do," said Teddy, when he and Janet were left to themselves, their father going to his store, "is to see how many tricks Top can do."
"Isn't it too bad we haven't Tip?" said Janet. "They were so cute together!"
"Yes," agreed her brother. "But maybe I can make Skyrocket let Top ride on his back, and teach 'em some other tricks. Come here, Top!" he called to the white poodle with the black spot on top of his head. "Let's see you walk on your hind legs."
Top was very willing to do this, and while Ted and Janet sat on boxes in the barn, with their other pets around them, Uncle Toby's poodle went through his performance. When he had walked on his hind legs in a little circle he suddenly sneezed.
"Oh, maybe he's catching cold!" cried Janet.
"No, I think that was a trick," suggested Teddy. "Sneeze, Top!" he ordered. Surely enough, the poodle sneezed, and he would do it every time Teddy or Janet told him to.
"Oh, he knows two tricks, besides the one he does with Tip," Teddy said in delight. "Maybe he does a lot more. I wish Uncle Toby had written them down, so we'd know what the dogs can do for our circus."
"We can write to Uncle Toby, when daddy gets the address, and ask about the tricks," Janet said.
"Yes," agreed Teddy, "we can do that. I wonder if Slider can do any tricks?" he asked, when Top had been rewarded for his efforts with a little bone to gnaw.
"Do alligators do tricks?" asked Janet, as she reached in through the bars of Mr. Nip's cage and scratched the head of the red and green parrot.
"I guess they do," Teddy answered. "If they don't we'll teach our Slider to do a trick. I'm going to take him out of his tank."
The cage of the little pet alligator was a sort of tank, in the bottom of which was some water, and in this were little pebbles, like those in some goldfish bowls. The tank stood near a window in the barn where the sun shone in, for Mr. Martin had told the Curlytops that their pets who lived in warm, or tropical, countries must be kept where it was warm and sunny. That was what they were used to in their native lands.
So Slider had a warm, sunny place, and now Teddy took the scaly creature out of the tank and put him on a box, where the sun could shine on the long-tailed fellow.
As it happened, there was a long, smooth board resting on the upper edge of this box and extending down to the barn floor. Teddy had laid the board slanting fashion on the box when he was making room for the cage of Jack, the monkey.
SLIDER WENT SLIDING DOWN THE SMOOTH SLANTING BOARD.
For a little while, after he had been placed in the warm sun on top of the box, the alligator remained quiet, slowly blinking his eyes. Then he began to crawl.
"That isn't much of a trick," declared Janet.
"Oh, I haven't started to teach him a trick yet," her brother answered. "I'm trying to think what an alligator can do best."
But Slider, as he was called, because he seemed to slide around in such a slow, easy fashion, took matters into his own claws, so to speak.
He crawled around on his box top and then managed to clamber up on the slanting board, one edge of which rested on the box.
"I wonder if he is going to slide down-hill," said Janet in a low voice, as if she did not want to disturb the little alligator.
And then, just as if he had made up his mind to do that very thing, Slider wiggled along until he was only holding to the edge of the slanting board by his two hind feet, while his long tail was only partly on the box. A moment later, giving himself a hitch like a boy getting his sled over the top of the hill, Slider went sliding down the smooth, slanting board.
Down he slid until he reached the barn floor, and as there was some smooth straw at the point where the board rested, Slider slid across this straw for several feet.
"Oh, did you see that?" cried Janet.
"See it? I should say I did!" cried Teddy. "Slider slid all right! That's going to be his trick! I'll make a longer board slide, and I'll put the lower end in a pan of water, so when Slider slides down he'll make a splash! That will be a fine trick for the circus! Come on, Slider, slide again!"
Teddy was just lifting up his pet alligator, intending to put him on the top of the slanting board, when Trouble was heard calling:
"Oh, come an' 'ook at Snuff! Come an' 'ook at Snuff! He's doin' suffin' funny!"