He awoke at last in affright, throwing off a breadth of rag carpet which, in want of something better, Mrs. Stillwell had folded about him. Dazed by his sudden rousing from such a profound sleep he fancied he was again mixed in a wild battle with somebody.
Shrieks and cries, of laughter and of pain, shrill voices of terrified children, the groans of men, the anxious tones of a woman, all these mingled in one hubbub of sound that was horrible indeed.
Then something leaped to his shoulders and he felt his hair pulled viciously, while an ugly little face, absurdly human, leered into his and sharp little teeth seized upon his ear.
With a yell of distress he put up his hand to choke the creature, and saw on the other side of the room a bald-headed gentleman wrestling with a duplicate of his own enemy.
“Oh! oh! oh!” cried poor Lucetta, and could find nothing else to say; while a laughing face peered in from the field outside, enjoying the pandemonium within.
“Nothing but monkeys, dear! Do ‘let’s keep them over night just to show the blessed children’!” mocked the incorrigible Corny; while the indignant gentleman struggling in the kitchen with his long-tailed assailant, glared at him and yelled:
“Laugh, will you, you idle good-for-naught! I’ll have you in the lock-up for this! Rousing me out of bed with your tale of a sick boy and luring me into this! Let me tell you, Cornwallis Stillwell, you’ve played your last practical joke, and into jail you go, soon as I can get a warrant for you! I mean it, this time, you miserable, worthless skunk!”
Corny’s mirth died under the harsh words hurled at him and a grim closing of his square jaws showed that submission wasn’t in his mind. But it was a voice from the bed in the corner which silenced both men, as Gerald awoke and regarded the scene.
“The monkeys are mine. I mean they are Melvin’s. No, Dorothy’s. Somebody take ’em to Dorothy, quick, quick! Oh! my head, my head!”
Jim’s fear of the simians vanished. With a signal to the man beyond the window he clutched the creature from his back and hurled it outward. Then he rushed to the irate doctor, grabbed his tormentor and hurried with it out of doors. A moment later the door of the cage, which the curious children had unfastened, was closed and locked and peace was again restored.