It was the liveliest, most mischievous monkey you can imagine. It stayed most of the time in Uncle Ferdinand's office. Up and down the book-shelves it climbed, just like a squirrel; now and then it threw itself across the room from one bookcase to another. One time it sprang straight onto the big lamp that hung from the ceiling, and made the chimney and shade come down in jingling fragments. Stomach hung from one of the chains, miserable and screaming with fright. This performance it never repeated.
Stomach loved nothing in the world so much as matches. Whenever it got hold of a box of matches it was overjoyed, and immediately climbed up on the highest bookcase. Here it sat and tossed the matches one by one down on the carpet. When it grew tired of this it flung the whole box, aiming with amazing success right at the top of Uncle Ferdinand's head. Uncle Ferdinand always sat patiently waiting for this last shot; then he got down on his knees, and picked up every single match!
But what caused Uncle Ferdinand the most trouble and care was that Aunt Octavia had strictly forbidden that the monkey should ever come anywhere near her. Uncle Ferdinand was on pins and needles for fear this should happen, and scarcely did anything all day but go around shutting doors to keep Stomach away from her.
All the servants had been instructed to do the same. Sometimes they were furious with Stomach, but when it had the toothache and sat with its hand under its little swollen cheek, and rocked sorrowfully back and forth like a little sick child, their hearts softened towards it and they forgave all its pranks. But to keep Stomach within bounds grew more and more difficult. It unfastened the window-catches, promenaded along the house walls and on the window-sills. Now and then it whisked through an open window of another house, returning with the most unbelievable things, water-jugs and pillows, and cologne-bottles which it emptied out very thoughtfully and slowly over the dahlia bed.
No one must even mention Stomach's name before Aunt Octavia. "The mere name of that disgusting creature nauseates me," she said. Uncle went about as if on eggs and grew even more careful about shutting the doors. But one day, in spite of all the caution, the terrible thing happened; the monkey got into Aunt Octavia's room. Some one had forgotten to shut a door; like a flash Stomach darted through, ran noiselessly over the soft carpet even into the sacred boudoir, gave a spring up onto Aunt Octavia, who lay with closed eyes on her sofa, and burrowed its whole little body in under her arm.
Then there was a hullabaloo! Aunt Octavia shrieked at the top of her lungs, and people rushed in.
"I lie here helpless," said Aunt Octavia; "it could have strangled me. Ferdinand, what was its object? I ask you, Ferdinand, what was it thinking of, when it burrowed in under my arm?"
"Perhaps it wanted to warm itself," said Uncle Ferdinand meekly.
"Warm itself!" said Aunt Octavia scornfully. "To bite me in the heart was what it wanted."
Nothing would satisfy her but that Uncle must take Stomach to the doctor to be chloroformed, though he would rather have done anything else in the world!