Chapter 4

Johnnie Green, or his father, or the hired man seemed all at once to grow terribly careless with maple sugar. The Major hardly ever visited the henhouse without finding a lump somewhere. And if his liking for eggs hadn't brought him thither daily, his taste for sugar would have been enough to make him continue his visits.

At last there came a day when Major Monkey discovered a thick pitcher on the henhouse floor. A chain was looped through its handle and nailed to the wall.

The Major grinned when he saw the chain.

"They don't want this pitcher to run away," he said to himself.

Being of a most curious turn of mind, he looked into the pitcher. And then he promptly thrust in a hand.

There was a good-sized lump of sugar inside. And Major Monkey's fingers closed upon it greedily.

His queer face wrinkled with annoyance when he found that he could not withdraw his hand. Empty, it could easily have slipped through the mouth of the pitcher. But with the sugar clutched in it, his hand stuck fast.

XXII

Caught!

Though Major Monkey tugged and tugged, he couldn't pull his hand out of the pitcher.

To be sure, if he had let go of the lump of maple sugar he might have withdrawn his hand easily enough.

But the Major loved sweets too dearly to loosen his hold on any such toothsome morsel--except to pop it into his mouth.

So he struggled and fretted. He even tried to break the pitcher by knocking it against the floor.

It might as well have been made of iron, it was so strong. And the Major only succeeded in hurting his own hand.

Of course he made a great racket. And the hens, who had become used to his more stealthy visits, began to flutter and squawk. They made such an uproar at last that Major Monkey wanted to hurl the pitcher at them. But he couldn't do that, with his hand stuck inside it. And besides, the pitcher was chained fast to the wall of the henhouse.

And right there lay the Major's greatest trouble. If the pitcher hadn't been fastened he would have run off on three legs, to the woods, where he might have tried in peace and quiet to get at the sugar inside it.

On the whole, Major Monkey spent a most unhappy quarter of an hour in the henhouse. And the worst moment of all came when the window dropped with a loud bang.

Then the sound of steps on the threshold made the Major turn his head.

There stood Farmer Green with a broad smile on his face, and Johnnie Green with his mouth wide open and his eyes bulging.

And with them was a dark-skinned man, short, and with rings in his ears, and a bright neckerchief tied about his throat.

"Aha-a!" cried the little man. "Look-a da monk! He greed-a boy!" And picking Major Monkey up in his arms, jug and all, he patted him fondly, saying, "Ah-a! Bad-a boy! He run-a da way from da ol' man, no?"

Then--for a soldier--Major Monkey did a strange thing. He began to whimper. But there is no doubt that he was weeping because he was glad, and not because he was sorry.

The little, dark man was his master.

And the Major was very, very fond of him. He knew, suddenly, that he had missed the little man sadly while he roamed about Pleasant Valley.

Though Johnnie Green was staring straight at him, Major Monkey clung to his captor and held his wrinkled face close to the little man's cheek.

"He sorra now!" the little man said to Johnnie Green.

"What's his name?" Johnnie inquired.

"Jocko!" said Major Monkey's master. "Dat nice-a name, eh?"

Johnnie Green thought that it was. And Major Monkey himself appeared to like the sound of it. It was a long time since he had heard it. No one had called him "Jocko" since that day--weeks before--when he had run away from his master, the organ-grinder, in the village.

XXIII

The Major Goes South

Out of one of his pockets the hand-organ man pulled a stout collar, from which dangled a long, thin chain. And Major Monkey made no protest when his master buckled the collar about his neck.

To tell the truth, the Major appeared to like being a captive. He was enjoying, especially, the maple sugar which the hand-organ man had turned out of the pitcher for him.

At the farmhouse, a little later, Major Monkey went through all his tricks for Johnnie Green and the rest of the family. Though he had once told Mr. Crow that he never wanted to hear the sound of a hand-organ again, the music that his master ground out while he himself capered about seemed to him the sweetest he had ever heard.

Of the Major's audience, the most astonished of all sat, unnoticed, in a tree in the dooryard and listened and looked on as if he could scarcely believe his eyes.

This one was Jolly Robin. And when, at length, the organ-grinder looped the long chain over his arm, slung the organ over his back, and went toiling up the road, with Major Monkey perched on top of the hand-organ, Jolly Robin had a very queer feeling. He flew down and alighted upon Farmer Greene's fence and trilled a quavering good-by. Major Monkey stood up and made a low bow to him. "He's going South, after all!" Jolly Robin said to himself. If that was so, old dog Spot must have been glad of it. Anyhow, he dashed out of the dooryard and ran a little way up the road, growling and barking, and telling Major Monkey exactly what he thought of him.

The Major seemed to enjoy old Spot's farewell. He danced up and down, and pulled back his arm, as if to throw something at Spot. But he changed his mind. He had a red apple, which Johnnie Green had given him. And instead of wasting it on old dog Spot, the Major took a bite out of it then and there.

Old Spot had trotted back to the farmhouse, looking very brave, in spite of the scolding Johnnie Green gave him. And Major Monkey was busily engaged with his apple, when he heard a sound that made him look up.

"_Caw! Caw!_" It was old Mr. Crow, whose keen eyes had caught sight of the hand-organ man plodding along with his precious load. Major Monkey whistled. And just for a moment, as he watched Mr. Crow sailing lazily overhead, he almost wished that he hadn't been quite so fond of sugar. For he knew that he could no longer wander through Pleasant Valley wherever his fancy led him.

But the hand-organ man began singing a merry song. And Major Monkey liked it so well that before he had gone a mile he wouldn't have turned back for anything. Now that his play-time had come to an end, he was eager to journey on, wherever his master might take him.

For Major Monkey--as he had told Mr. Crow in the beginning--was a great traveller.

THE END

Transcriber's Notes

1. Punctuation has been normalized to contemporary standards.

2. List of books relocated to after title page.

3. Typographic errors corrected in original: p. 38 whether he he to whether he ("whether he thought it a good one") p. 48 musn't to mustn't ("we mustn't get lost") p. 58 mits to mitts ("pair of black mitts") p. 119 friend' to friend's ("in her friend's eyes")

End of Project Gutenberg's The Tale of Major Monkey, by Arthur Scott Bailey