MR. CAPPER'S BUNS
Forgetting in the excitement, all about teaching Skyrocket and Top to do some tricks together, as Tip and Top did before Tip was lost, Teddy and Janet ran across the street toward Mrs. Johnson, who was standing beside the carriage in which was her baby. Near her was Trouble, but the little fellow did not seem to be as excited as was Mrs. Johnson.
"Trouble," cried Janet, as she took hold of her little brother's arm, "did you tease Ruth?" Ruth was the name of Mrs. Johnson's baby, and though Trouble was, usually, a good little chap, he might have done something to make a baby cry, Janet realized.
"I didn't do nuffin'!" declared Trouble.
"Oh, no, Trouble is all right!" said Mrs. Johnson. "It's a big, black snake that has crawled into my baby's carriage. I put Ruth out here to have her sleep, and I looked from the window every once in a while to see that she was all right."
"And she was, for quite a while. But a moment ago, when I looked, I saw Trouble near the carriage, and then I saw a big, ugly snake crawling over Ruth's robe. Oh, where is it? Where's the snake, darling? Did the snake bite you?" and Mrs. Johnson caught Ruth up from the carriage in her arms.
"I never knew a snake would crawl up into a baby carriage," said Teddy. "I don't see any; do you, Jan?"
"No," answered his sister, "I don't!"
"There it is! Look!" cried Mrs. Johnson, pointing with one hand, while she held Ruth close to her in her other arm. The baby had been rather rudely awakened from her sleep, and she was just getting ready to cry. Her lips were puckering up, and in another moment she would let out a yell. Janet and Teddy knew this, for they had, often enough, watched Trouble do the same thing when he was smaller.
"There's the snake!" exclaimed Mrs. Johnson, and, as she spoke and pointed, the Curlytops saw something black crawl out from among the folds of the robes in the baby carriage.
Ted had one glimpse of the head of the reptile, and then the boy cried:
"That isn't a snake! It's Slider, our pet alligator! How did he get here?"
"A pet alligator?" cried Mrs. Johnson. "In my Ruth's carriage! How did it get here?"
"I bringed it!" said Trouble, in the silence that followed.
"You what?" cried Janet.
"I bringed Slider ober to play wif Ruff!" said Trouble. "I play wif Slider in barn, and den hims hoots get tired, so I bringed him over to ride in de carriage wif Ruff."
"What does he mean?" asked Mrs. Johnson, crooning to "Ruff," as Trouble called the baby, and making the little one quiet. For William was using some of his "baby talk," which he often did when he was excited.
"He means that the alligator's feet got tired, I suppose," translated Janet. "He says 'hoots' for 'feet.' He must mean that Slider got tired of sliding down the board."
Mrs. Johnson looked from one Curlytop to the other, and then at Trouble. A puzzled look was on her face.
"Really, children dear," she said, "you may know what you are talking about, but I don't. What with hoots, Slider and a board I'm all mixed up!"
"I bringed him—I bringed Slider," explained Trouble.
"Yes, we know you did that," said Teddy. "But you shouldn't have, Trouble. It was wrong to take our pet out of the barn, and it was wrong to put Slider in the baby carriage."
"Yes, we didn't know Trouble was going to do anything like this," said Janet, apologizing for her little brother's misdeed. "But Ted and I were talking about what tricks we'd get Skyrocket and Top to do, now that Tip is gone. And we'd just got through watching Snuff do a new trick on top of a football, so we didn't watch Trouble very much."
"How many pets you have!" exclaimed Mrs. Johnson. "I suppose those are pets you have been talking about?" she asked.
"Ours and Uncle Toby's," answered Teddy. "We have more pets than we ever had before, and we're going to give a circus. Will you come, Mrs. Johnson?"
"An' bring Ruff!" invited Trouble.
There was a laugh at this.
"If you love Ruth you mustn't put Slider in her carriage any more," cautioned Janet, as she lifted the pet alligator out from among the blankets. "Little babies don't like alligators."
"All wite. I like 'em," said Trouble, and then he ran back across the street.
"We'll be going now," said Teddy to Mrs. Johnson. "We're sorry William made trouble."
"Oh, he didn't mean to," said Ruth's mother. "He's a dear little fellow. I must come over and see your pets. Ruth loves a pussy or a dog, but she doesn't know much about alligators."
"We have a monkey, too," said Janet.
"And a parrot named Mr. Nip," added her brother.
"And white rats and mice! They're real cute!" exclaimed Janet.
"I don't believe I would like the mice!" said Mrs. Johnson.
"But ours are white," Janet explained. "That makes a big difference. They're as nice as rabbits!"
"They wouldn't be for me," said Ruth's mother, with a laugh. "Good-bye, Curlytops! Come over again, and bring a pussy or doggie with you."
Ted and Janet promised they would, and then they hurried back across the street after Trouble. They wanted to make sure he would not get into any more mischief with the pets.
Daddy Martin was told, that evening after supper, all that had happened during the day, from the discovery that Slider and Snuff could do tricks, to the finding of the pet alligator in baby Ruth's carriage.
"Well, it seems you had lots of excitement to-day," he said to his wife.
"Just a little," she agreed.
"But if Uncle Toby's pets are to make trouble I don't know that we can keep them," Daddy Martin said.
Teddy and Janet looked at each other.
"Oh, we can't let them go now!" exclaimed Teddy.
"We're just getting to love them!" his sister added.
"And we haven't found out any tricks yet that the white mice can do," Teddy went on. "We haven't even named 'em!"
"Well, I suppose if the neighbors don't complain I shouldn't," admitted Mr. Martin. "But with the monkey scaring Mrs. Blake, and the alligator scaring Mrs. Johnson——"
"They weren't very much scared," interrupted Ted. "Please let us keep Uncle Toby's pets! We want to give a circus."
"We'll see," said Mr. Martin. "I hope nothing more will happen, though, to annoy the neighbors."
"We'll watch our pets so they won't get out," promised Ted and Janet.
The next few days were spent by the Curlytops in getting better acquainted with the animals that had been brought from Uncle Toby's. They liked their new pets more and more the more they saw of them. Of course they wished they could get Tip back, but that trick dog seemed to have vanished.
Daddy Martin put an advertisement in the paper, and offered a reward to whoever would bring Tip back, but there were no answers—at least none that amounted to anything. It is true that several men and boys came with strange dogs they thought answered the description of the missing Tip, but none of the animals was the pet so much wanted.
Nor was anything heard of the missing youth "Shorty." He seemed to have disappeared with the poodle, and the police said they believed Shorty knew where Tip was, and had, perhaps, taken him away in order to sell him.
"Well, of course we have enough animals without Tip to give a show," said Teddy. "But I'd love to get Tip back. And I guess Top is lonesome without him."
"I guess so, too," added Janet.
But if Top was lonesome he showed no signs of it after one or two days. He made friends with Skyrocket, as Snuff did with Turnover, and the dogs and cats lived happily together.
But alas for the hopes of Mr. Martin that his neighbors would not again be troubled by the pets of the Curlytops. It was about a week after the animals had been brought from Uncle Toby's house that, as Mr. Martin was coming home from the store rather early one afternoon, he saw a crowd in front of the bakeshop of Mr. Capper, just around the corner from the home of the Curlytops.
"I hope that isn't a fire in Mr. Capper's bakery," thought Daddy Martin, for more than once hot grease had boiled over in the bakeshop and caused slight fires.
As Mr. Martin approached Mr. Capper's store he heard loud laughter from the crowd of men and boys in front of the show window.
"It can't be a fire, or they wouldn't laugh," said the father of the Curlytops. "I wonder what it is?"
He hastened on, and as he came within view of the bakery window he uttered an exclamation of surprise. For there, among the buns, eating them and playing among the other cakes, were several large white rats and mice.
"Look at that one big one stand up on his hind legs and nibble a bun just like a squirrel!" said a man watching the antics of the white rats and mice among Mr. Capper's buns. If this man had only known it, squirrels and rats belong to the same family, that called "rodents," only a squirrel has a much larger tail than a rat or a mouse.
"I wonder what in the world Mr. Capper lets those white rats stay in his bakeshop window for?" thought Mr. Martin, as he ran up. "They are not harmful, of course, but people will not like to eat bakery stuff after rats and mice, even if they are white, have run around them. It's a poor advertisement."
At that moment the baker himself, who had been out in his oven-room, came running into the shop. He gave one look at his window, saw the white rats and mice playing around in and nibbling his choice buns, and then the baker cried:
"Oh, who did this? Who played this trick on me and spoiled my buns? Who let those mice in there?"
"Didn't you do it yourself?" asked Mr. Martin, who knew the baker very well, having traded with him for a number of years.
"Let those mice in my window? Never!" cried Mr. Capper. "Why should I do a thing like that?"
"I thought maybe it was for an advertisement—to attract customers to your store," said Mr. Martin. "Though I thought it was rather funny."
"It is too funny!" cried the baker. "All my buns are spoiled, and I just baked them. As for customers—I have a crowd, yes, but they will not buy what the mice have nibbled.
"Whose mice are they? Whose white rats are they? I ask you that!" cried the baker, who was much excited. "A little while ago two boys come in to buy cookies. I wait on them, and I go back to my oven. Then the next I know I see a crowd and I come out to find—these!"
He pointed to the white rats and mice that were having a fine time among the buns in the bakeshop window.
"You say two boys were here a little while ago?" asked Mr. Martin, and he began to have a suspicion of what had happened.
"Two boys," replied the baker. "They have a box with them—Ha! here is the box now. It is the cage that the mice got out of!" he cried, pointing to a box with a wire front on the floor of the store, in a corner.
"Uncle Toby's box!" exclaimed Mr. Martin, in a low voice.
"What's that?" cried the baker. "You know these white rats and mice, Mr. Martin?"
"I'm afraid I do," said the father of the Curlytops. "My children got some new pets from an uncle of mine—Uncle Toby. Among the pets were white mice and rats. That is the box we brought them in from Pocono. But how did the box get here?"
"Some boys brought it in, I am telling you," the baker answered. "Two boys."
"Did you know them? Was one my son Teddy?" asked Mr. Martin.
"I do not know—I forgot to look I was in such a hurry, for my bread was almost burning in my oven. I run to the store quick, as I am all alone now; I wait on the boys, they want cookies; and I run back to my oven. Now I come—the rats—the mice!" and Mr. Capper, who was a Frenchman, raised his hands in the air over his head in despair.
"I wonder if Ted could have done this?" mused Mr. Martin.
And then he heard Teddy's voice calling:
"Come on, Jim! Here they are! We left the rats here, and—Oh, I say! Look! They got out of the cage, and look what they're doing to the buns!"
A moment later Teddy Martin came pushing his way through the crowd now in the bakery.