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“Well, we wish you luck,” chirped the Cricket, and the Grasshopper did also.

Away hopped the Monkey, making his journey through the tall grass of the green meadow. The grass was rather high, and he could not see very well. But he looked the best he could on every side, and, every now and then, he stopped to listen.

He wanted to hear the barking of Carlo or the shouts of Dick and Herbert, who, as he guessed, were, even then, looking for him. But the boys looked in the wrong place, and, as it happened, the Monkey jumped in the wrong direction.

The only creatures the Monkey met were bugs and beetles, butterflies and birds, grasshoppers and crickets in the grass. They all spoke to him kindly, and though some of them said they had seen or heard the boys and the dog, none seemed able to tell the Monkey how to find his friends.

“And it is getting late, too,” said the Monkey to himself, as he looked up at the sky. “Soon the sun will set, and it will be dark. And then it will be so much the harder for me to find Dick and Herbert and Carlo, or for them to find me. Well, I suppose I must make the best of it.”

He was a plucky Monkey chap, almost as adventurous as the Bold Tin Soldier, and he kept jumping on through the tall grass of the meadow. All at once, as he skipped along, being able to move quite fast now that he was off his stick, the Monkey stumbled over a stone and fell flat down.

“Ouch!” he cried, as he picked himself up. “I hope I haven’t broken anything.”

Very luckily he had not. He was as good as ever, except that his plush fur was rumpled a bit. But he soon brushed himself smooth again, and he was about to hop on, when, all at once, he felt a splash of water on his head.

“Dear me! is some one squirting water at me from a toy rubber ball or a water pistol?” exclaimed the Monkey.

More drops splashed down, dozens and dozens of them. Then the Monkey looked up and cried:

“Oh, it’s raining! It’s pouring! I’ll be soaking wet! I’ll be drowned out in the rain without an umbrella or rubbers! Oh, my!”

And the rain came down harder and harder and harder.

CHAPTER VIII

HERBERT FINDS THE MONKEY

Poor Monkey on a Stick! Oh, I forgot! He wasn’t on a stick now, was he? Herbert had the stick, and it was just as well he had, for the Monkey, being rid of it, could hop around better.

“And I need to hop around a lot, to keep out of the wet,” said the Monkey to himself, after he had come from the Rabbit’s cave and had been caught in the rain.

Harder and harder the big drops came pelting down. At first the Monkey tried to keep dry by crawling under the grass. But, thick and tall as it was, it was not like an umbrella, and the drops came through. Soon the Monkey was very wet.

“I know I’ll catch cold!” he said sorrowfully. “I’ll get the snuffles! I’m not used to being soaked like this.”

And, truly, he was not. Since he had been made at the workshop of Santa Claus, the Monkey had never been out in a rain storm. He had always been either in the toy factory, the department store, or in some house, and when he was taken from one place to another he was always well wrapped up, so it did not matter whether there was snow or rain.

But now it was different. The Monkey was getting wetter and wetter each minute.

“It’s the first time I’ve been in so much water since the janitor’s little girl tried to wash the ink spot off the end of my tail,” the Monkey said.

Just then he heard a voice calling: