"No, let"s make a pudding," suggested Jumpo. "A pudding is ever so much easier, and besides it will be done quicker, and we can taste it to see if it"s good."
"Fine!" cried Jacko, "we"ll make a pudding. But how do you do it?"
"It is easy," said his brother. "You take some milk and some sugar and some eggs and cocoanut, and things like that, and mix them up in a pan.
Then you bake it in the oven."
"What, the pan or the pudding?" Jacko wanted to know.
"Both, I guess," answered Jumpo. "Anyhow I know mamma puts the pudding in the pan, and then she puts both of them in the oven, so she must bake both."
"Then we"ll do it that way," decided Jacko. "Now here are some eggs, and we can get the milk and sugar and other things. But, hold on, Jumpo; do you put the eggs in just as they are, with the sh.e.l.ls on, or do you break them?"
"I don"t know," spoke the green monkey, as he looked at his tail to see if it had any hard knots in it, but it hadn"t.
"Then we can"t make a pudding if you don"t know," said Jacko, disappointed like.
"Oh, yes, we can, easily," went on his brother. "We can put in some eggs without the sh.e.l.ls, and some with the sh.e.l.ls on."
"The very thing," cried Jacko. "I never would have thought of that. You are very clever, Jumpo." So the two monkey boys took a pan, and into it they broke some eggs, throwing the sh.e.l.ls away, and into the pan they also put some whole eggs with the sh.e.l.ls on.
"Now for the milk," said Jumpo.
"Should we use sweet milk or sour milk?" asked his brother.
"There you go again!" exclaimed Jumpo. "You are always asking questions to puzzle me. What do you think--sweet or sour milk?"
"Both!" cried Jacko, "then we"ll be sure to be right."
"Of course!" agreed Jumpo; so into the pan they put some sweet and also some sour milk.
"Now for some sugar and some raisins and grated cocoanut and the pudding will be done!" called Jacko. So they put those things in the pan and stirred them up with a big spoon.
"Now, should we bake this pudding in the oven or on top of the stove in a frying pan?" asked Jacko.
"Oh, there you go again!" cried Jumpo. "Asking more puzzling questions!
Let"s do both."
"We can"t," decided his brother.
"Well, then, we"ll fry this pudding in a pan on top of the stove, as mamma does an omelet," said Jumpo. "It looks like an omelet, anyhow." So into the frying pan they poured their pudding, set it on the stove, and soon it began to cook.
"Now when it"s brown on one side, I"ll turn it over with the pancake turner," said Jumpo, "and cook the other side."
"Good!" cried his brother. So they carefully watched the pudding, waiting for it to be cooked on one side. And, just as Jumpo got ready to turn it, there was a knocking on the door of the little house, and a voice cried:
"I"m coming in to eat you monkeys up!" And with that in came a savage wolf. Oh, how frightened Jacko and Jumpo were! But Jumpo knew just what to do.
First he quickly tied his tail into a hard knot so it would be short, and not in the way. Then he took up the soft pudding out of the frying pan on the pancake turner and he threw it right in the face of that wolf.
Oh! I wish you could have seen him! That wolf was all covered with broken eggs, and whole eggs, and raisins and sweet milk, and sour milk, and cocoanut, and sugar and everything like that. Oh! what a sight he was! And as he was so frightened that he ran down the tree, up which he had climbed by his sharp toenails, and he hid himself in the woods.
"Oh, but our pudding is spoiled!" cried Jacko, sad like.
"Never mind," said Mamma Kinkytail, who came in just then, having seen the wolf run away. "Jumpo was a good boy." And when she heard how they had made the pudding she said it was just as well, after all, that it was thrown at the wolf, for it would not have been good to eat. So she made a nice chocolate cake for supper, leaving out the egg sh.e.l.ls and sour milk, and the pudding was all eaten up, for the red and green monkeys and their papa were very hungry.
Now the next story will be about Jacko and the peanuts--that is, if the little girl across the street doesn"t wheel her doll carriage into a mud puddle and splash my new shoes that I want to dance in at the moving pictures.
STORY IV
JACKO AND THE PEANUTS
One day Jumpo Kinkytail, the little green monkey, was ill with the sniffle-snuffles and could not go to school. I don"t know whether it was because he had missed his lesson the day before, or because he waded through a mud-puddle on his way home, and got his feet wet that made him sniffle. Anyhow Dr. Possum came and gave him some bitter medicine.
It was so bitter that Jumpo made a funny face like two sour oranges and a piece of lemon pie all rolled up together. And his brother Jacko laughed, which didn"t make Jumpo feel any better.
"Humph! I don"t laugh when you are ill," said Jumpo, twisting up his face like a crooked doughnut.
"I"m sorry, but really I couldn"t help it," said Jacko, as he got ready to go off to school. "You do make the funniest faces, Jumpo. But I"ll tell the teacher you can"t come to cla.s.s, and I"ll ask her what lesson you are to study. Then I"ll bring home your books."
"Oh, you needn"t bother," said Jumpo quickly. "I--I guess I"m not sick enough for that. Just tell teacher that I can spell cow now. I know better than to begin it with a "K."" For that is the lesson Jumpo had missed the day before he was taken ill.
Well, Jacko started for school, and on the way all the other animal children asked him where his little green brother was.
"I"m very sorry," said Bully No-Tail, the frog, when he had heard what was the trouble. "I like Jumpo because he is the same color I am, and tomorrow I"m going to bring him some green grapes so he can play marbles with them in bed."
"That will be nice," said Jacko. Then he got to school and told the teacher about Jumpo. Of course the owl lady was also sorry for the little sick monkey, and she wrote him a nice note on a piece of white cocoanut, so that after Jumpo had read it he could eat the cocoanut--that is, when he was well enough.
Pretty soon it was time for school to be out, and Jacko hurried home to be with his sick brother.
"I"ll just take the short path through the woods," thought the little red monkey. "Then I"ll be home quicker. And I wish I had a penny, or a five-cent piece. Then I would buy Jumpo an ice cream cone. But I haven"t any money."
So of course when one has no money one can buy no ice cream cones, but still Jacko wished it just the same, which shows that he had a kind heart.
He was going through a dark part of the woods, when all of a sudden he saw, just in front of him, some small, whitish looking things, like little stones.
"Ha! I wonder what these are?" said Jacko, as he took hold of his books in his tail and went carefully forward. "Perhaps that is a trap to catch me."
Then he saw that the little things were a lot of peanuts, all strung out in a row on the ground, like grains of corn, one after another. "Ah, ha!
I see!" exclaimed the Jack o"Lantern--oh, I beg your pardon, I mean the red monkey. "These are peanuts. Some one has been along here with a bag that had a hole in it, and the peanuts dropped out," went on Jacko.
"Well, if I knew to whom they belonged I"d give them back. But, as I don"t, I"ll take them home to my sick brother, and later on, if some one claims them, I"ll save up my pennies and pay them back."
So with this kind thought in mind, Jacko set to work to gather up the peanuts. There were quite a number of them, when they were all in one pile--as many as two five-cent bags full.
"I think I will eat just one, to see if they will be good for Jumpo,"