“No, Miss Dorothy, there you’re mistook! Billy wouldn’t be give, he wasn’t accepted, he—Honey sweetness, Grandpa cayn’t!”
“Are those monkeys for sale?” asked Mrs. Jabb.
Aurora looked at Gerald and Gerald nudged Melvin. Here was a solution to their own dilemma—“what shall we do with the monks?” So being thus urged, as he supposed, by his partner in trade, Melvin promptly answered:
“No, Mrs. Jabb, they aren’t for sale. But if this little girl would like to have them we are delighted to make her a present of them, don’t you know? Just—delighted.”
The lady was going to say she couldn’t accept so valuable a gift and would prefer to buy them, but just then a groan he couldn’t subdue escaped the disappointed Gerald and she felt that he was selfish and should be punished. Of course, anybody rich enough to idle away a whole autumn, house-boating, could afford to give a half-share in a pair of monkeys to a crippled child. But in her judgment she did poor Gerry an injustice. His groan would have been a cry of rejoicing that his deal in monkeys was to be taken off his hands had not Jim, at that instant, given him a kick under the table with a too forcible sympathy.
“Very well. But how does a person transport monkeys?” asked the doctor’s wife, while Eunice danced about the cabin in great glee.
“Oh! they have a cage. A real nice cage, but I’d like to give it a good cleaning before it’s taken away,” said Elsa.
“Would that take long? I’d like to send for it as soon as we get home. Eunice so seldom cares about any new toy I’m anxious to please her while the idea is new.”
“Not long, I’ll be real quick. Would you like to come and see it done, Eunice?”
“Oh! yes, I want, I want!”