Oh, how I wished that I could be a human being for a few minutes! A big strong man with a rope in my hands, and that fellow tied to one end of it. Wouldn't I make him dance? Wouldn't I jerk him and scold him and beat him, and give him a taste of how it feels to be a helpless animal, sick and suffering, in the power of a great ugly brute like himself?
Maybe he would not have been so rough if he had known that any one besides the children was looking on. He did not see the gentleman standing at the open front door across the street, watching him with a frown on his face. He did not see him, as I did, walk back into the hall and turn the crank of an alarm-signal. But in less than two minutes, it seemed to me, that same gentleman was coming across the street with the policeman he had summoned. A few words passed between them, and almost before the children knew what was happening, the policeman had the organ-grinder by the arm, and was marching him off down the street. The gentleman who had caused the arrest followed with the poor trembling monkey.
"That's the president of the society for preventin' you bein' cruel to animals," explained one of the larger boys to the crowd of children. "You dasn't hurt a fly when he is around. Lucky for the monk that the man happened to stop in front of his house this mornin'. Come on, lets see what they do with it."
The children trooped off after him, and Phil and Elsie watched them down the street until they were out of sight, pushing and tripping at each other's heels in their eagerness to follow.
Then Phil climbed up on one of the gate-posts with me in his arms, and Elsie promptly scrambled up to the other.
"That's what might happen to Dago any day, sister," Phil said, in a solemn voice, as he hugged me tight. If we give him up, some old organ-grinder may get him, and beat him and beat him, and be cruel to him, and I'm just not going to let anybody have him. I'll hide him somewhere so nobody can find him."
"Trouble is he won't stay hid," answered Elsie, with a mournful look in her big blue eyes. "We'll have to think of some other plan."
It was a cold morning, but there they perched on the gate-posts, and thought and thought until the school-bell began to ring.