she was baking, for once he had mixed the sugar and salt, and everything tasted dreadfully. But you see he forgot what his mamma had said, and almost before he knew what he was doing he had picked up the cocoanut.

"I'll just shake it, to see if there is any milk inside," he said, and he held it up to his ear, and wiggled it to and fro. Surely enough there was plenty of the milky white juice inside, and Jumpo could hear it splashing around.

"Oh, this is fine!" he cried as he shook the cocoanut harder than before, and then—alas and alack-a-day! The first thing he knew the cocoanut had slipped from his paws.

Down upon the floor it fell, away it rolled, and before Jumpo could stop it that cocoanut had fallen out of the kitchen door of the little house in the tree, right down to the ground below.

"Oh, I must get it before mamma comes back!" exclaimed the green monkey. Quickly he scrambled down the tree, winding his tail around the lowest branch and leaping to the ground. But the cocoanut was nowhere to be seen.

"I wonder if Jacko could have taken it to play a joke on me?" thought Jumpo. Then he looked over toward the bushes, and he saw something moving, and there was the cocoanut rolling along, faster than ever.

"My! It must be going down hill!" cried Jumpo, as he sprang after it. Well, the cocoanut kept on going. Once Jumpo almost had it in his left paw, but the cocoanut hit a stone and bounded away from him. Then he almost had it in his right foot, but the cocoanut went splash into a little brook of water and the green monkey couldn't see it. Then it rolled out and he managed to get his tail around the nut, but it was so slippery that it got away from him—the cocoanut got away, not Jumpo's tail, you understand. No, that stayed fast on the monkey boy.

"Oh, I guess we won't have any cocoanut cake for supper to-night," thought the little green fellow. "I wish I had stayed out of the kitchen, as mamma told me. But I'm not going to give up yet. I'll get that cocoanut if it's possible!" So he ran on, faster than ever, but the cocoanut rolled quicker and quicker. It was now getting late, and Jumpo didn't know what to do. He could still see the cocoanut ahead of him, but he couldn't catch up to it.

"Oh, whatever shall I do?" he cried. And just then he saw something like a big red hole, with rows of sharp white teeth in it. At first he thought it was his red brother Jacko, but when he looked again he saw that it was the skillery-scalery alligator.

"Oh, I'm just waiting for you," said the 'gator with his mouth open real wide.

"Oh, dear!" cried Jumpo, "this comes of not minding one's mother. The cocoanut is gone and I'll soon be gone, too," for he surely thought the alligator would get him.

In fact the alligator was just going to eat up the little green monkey when the skillery-scalery creature gave his tail a big flop. Then something round and brown sailed up into the air, came down ker-bunk, right on the end of the 'gator's nose, and bounded off.

"Oh, my! Some one is shooting cannon balls at me!" cried the 'gator. "I never can stand cannon balls." So away he went, as fast as he could, taking his double-jointed tail with him. And listen, as the telephone girl says, it wasn't a cannon ball at all, that had hit the 'gator, it was the lost cocoanut.

Jumpo caught it as it came down, after the 'gator had accidentally tossed it into the air with his tail, and then the green monkey hurried home with it as fast as he could hurry, and so he had cocoanut cake for supper after all.

Of course, Jumpo's mamma scolded him a little for what he had done, and he said he was sorry, so she forgave him. And the monkeys had more adventures. I'll tell you of one soon, and the next story will be about the Kinkytails making a pudding—that is, if the elephant in the picture-book doesn't take the baby's rattle-box and beat the drum with it.

STORY III

THE KINKYTAILS MAKE A PUDDING

It happened, once upon a time, that Jacko and Jumpo Kinkytail, the red and green monkey boys, didn't have to go to school. This was because it was Saturday, when there was no school; so now I've told you the true reason.

"What shall we do?" asked Jumpo of his brother, as he wound the end of his long tail around a tree branch and swung head downward while he ate an apple as easily as you can shell a peanut.

"Do you want to play Indian and let me shoot you with my make-believe gun?" asked Jacko, the red monkey.

"No, indeed! Thank you just the same," replied his green brother as he unhooked his tail from the tree and stood on his head, getting ready to turn a somersault. "The last time you shot at me while we were playing Indian, you didn't remember that you had a cork in your pop-gun, and it hit me on the end of the nose. I haven't forgotten that."

"I'm very sorry," spoke Jacko. "Then I'll tell you what let's do. We'll go off in the woods, and maybe we can find the old monkey who has five hand organs, one of which he plays with his tail. Perhaps he'll let us play one."

"Fine!" cried Jumpo, so off they started for the woods.

Well, they looked and they looked some more, but they couldn't find the monkey who had five hand organs, and pretty soon those two boys went back home.

But when Jacko and Jumpo got to the little house in the tree, their mamma wasn't there. Instead she had left a note on a plate of bread and jam for them. The note said:

"Dear Jacko and Jumpo. I have gone to call on Aunt Lettie, the old lady goat. I will be back in time to get your supper."

"Well!" said Jumpo, winding his tail around the leg of a chair, before he sat down in it. "I hope she does come back in time for supper, for I am hungry. However, she left some bread and jam for us. Let's eat that."

"She is the best mamma in all the world," said Jacko, as he took some of the bread and jam, "and I think we ought to do something for her."

"What could we do?" asked Jumpo.

"Why, we could get something ready for supper, so she won't have to work so hard when she comes in. Let's make a cake."

"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 shells 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 shells, and some with the shells 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 shells away, and into the pan they also put some whole eggs with the