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“What’s that you say?” cried the Cotton Doll. “Did you dare put ink on my nose, on my chin and my cheeks?”

“That’s what I did, just for fun!” chattered the mischievous Monkey. And, really, he had done just that. Oh, he was a regular “cut-up” when he was by himself, that Monkey was.

“I must look terrible!” said the poor Cotton Doll, and, raising her hands, she rubbed them over her face. She felt the wet spots where the Monkey had daubed her with ink.

“Oh! aren’t you mean?” cried the Cotton Doll. “My little girl mistress will never like me again when the teacher gives me back to her. I’m all spoiled!”

“No, you just look funny!” laughed the Monkey. “You looked funny when I put ink spots on you, but now you look funnier than ever, ’cause you’ve spread the ink all around, and made big splotches of it. Oh, my! Excuse me while I laugh!” he cried, and he wiggled and twisted around on the bottom of the drawer, laughing in whispers at the funny look on the face of the Cotton Doll.

“You’re too mean for anything!” said the Doll to the Monkey, and she was almost ready to cry. But she happened to think that if she shed any tears they would wash down through the ink on her cheeks and make her look queerer than ever. So she did not cry.

“I’m never going to speak to you again, so there!” exclaimed the Cotton Doll, and she would have stamped her foot if there had been room for her to stand up in the desk drawer–which there wasn’t. So she just banged her heels on the bottom of it.

“Oh, I’ll be good!” promised the Monkey. “I won’t put any more ink on you, and I’ll see if I can get some of it off on this piece of blotting paper. I blotted my tail on it.”

He tried to clean the Doll’s face, but, by this time, the ink had dried, and you know how hard it is to get dried ink off your fingers after you have written a letter. Well, it was this way with the Cotton Doll. The ink stayed on her face.

“Well, if you have ink on your face I’ve also got some on the end of my tail, where I dipped it into the bottle,” said the Monkey chap, thinking to cheer up the Doll by this.

“Yes, but the ink doesn’t show on your brown tail as it does on my white face,” said the Doll. “However, there is no use crying over spilled milk, I suppose,” she went on. “Only if you do such a thing again I’ll never speak to you as long as I live!”

“I’ll never do it again,” said the Monkey in a sorrowful voice. “Now let’s have some fun. You tell me some of your adventures and I’ll tell you some of mine. Did you ever live in a store?”

“Oh, yes, that’s where I came from,” answered the Doll.

“And was there a Calico Clown in your store, who was always asking what it was that made more noise than a pig under a gate?” asked the Monkey.

“No. But there was a Jumping Jack who was always trying to see how high he could kick, and one day he nearly kicked my hat off,” said the Cotton Doll. “But tell me, please, some of your adventures.”

The Monkey was just starting to tell how the Calico Clown’s red and yellow trousers were burned in the gas jet one day, when, all of a sudden, there was a great noise and commotion in the schoolroom. The Monkey and the Doll could not tell what had caused it, though the Monkey did try to look out through the keyhole.

“Can you see anything?” asked the Doll.

“I can see some water dripping down,” answered the long-tailed chap, “and the teacher and the children are running around as fast as anything.”