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“Oh, I wonder what has happened!” exclaimed the Doll. And just then she and the Monkey on a Stick heard the teacher say:

“Run out quickly, children! Run out, all of you. A water pipe has burst and there’s a regular rain storm inside our nice schoolroom.”

“Please can’t I have my Monkey on a Stick before I go out?” asked Herbert. “You put him in your desk, Teacher!”

“And I want my knife you took away, please!” called another boy.

“We have no time for those things, now,” the teacher said. “The water is coming down fast, and we’ll all be wet through if we stay. The Monkey, knife and other things will be all right in my desk. Get your hats, and pass out quickly. More pipes may burst and flood the school.

“Go home, children, all of you,” said the teacher. “To-morrow the pipes will be mended, and, if the school is dry enough, we will go on with our lessons. But run home now.”

You may well imagine that most of the boys and girls were glad of the holiday that had come to them so unexpectedly. But Herbert felt sorry; that he had to leave his Monkey on a Stick in school. When he reached home he acted so strangely that his mother wanted to know what the matter was.

Of course Herbert had to tell that he had taken his Monkey to school, and he also had to tell what had happened afterward.

“Of course you did wrong,” said Herbert’s mother, “and you must suffer a little punishment.”

“What kind of punishment?” asked Herbert.

“The punishment of not having your Monkey,” was the answer.

And now we must see what happened to the Monkey on a Stick.

“What do you imagine will happen next?” asked the Doll of the Monkey, for they had heard what had been said.

“I don’t know,” was the answer. “But if we are left alone here in the room we can get out of the desk and have some fun.”

“Oh, so we can!” cried the Doll. “I’m tired of being shut up here. Can you open the desk, Mr. Monkey?”

“I think so,” was the reply.

The Monkey was just going to raise the lid, by prying under it with the long stick up and down which he climbed, when, all of a sudden, there was a noise in the room.

“Some one is coming!” whispered the Doll.

“I hear them,” said the Monkey. He looked out through the keyhole and saw a man wading through the water toward the desk. “I guess it’s the night watchman,” went on the Monkey in a whisper.

“We don’t have a night watchman in school,” whispered back the Doll. “But we have a janitor. Maybe it’s the janitor coming.”

And so it was. The janitor had shut off some of the water in the broken pipes, and he was going about from room to room to see how much damage had been done. He walked up to the desk inside of which the Monkey and Doll had been placed.

“Well, I do declare!” exclaimed the janitor, and the Monkey and the Doll heard him. “There’s ink running out of the drawer of the teacher’s desk! Ink running out of her desk, and water running out of the broken pipes! Sure the school had bad luck to-day! But I must see about this ink. It may spoil everything in the drawer. The bottle must have been upset and the cork came out when the teacher and children were running around after the pipes burst.”

The Monkey turned away from the keyhole and looked at the bottle of ink. Surely enough, it lay on its side, and the cork was out. A stream of black liquid was running out of the bottle, dripping down through a crack in the teacher’s desk.

“Oh, do you suppose you did that?” asked the Doll in a whisper of the Monkey.

“I–I guess maybe I did,” he answered. “After I dipped my tail in the ink and marked your face, maybe I didn’t put the cork back in tightly enough. And when I jumped around, to see what all the racket was about, I must have knocked the bottle over.”