It was because his mamma had gone down to the five and ten-cent store to get a new piano with a dishpan on top, so she could wash her dishes and play the piano at the same time. And Jacko was at school, but Jumpo had been kept home because he had a cold.
"So you will be in charge of the house while I am away," said his mamma, as she started for the five and ten-cent store.
"All right, and I'll take good care of the house," said Jumpo. And he felt quite pleased to think that he was old enough to take care of a whole big house all by himself.
"I wonder what I can do to make the time pass quickly until Jacko comes home from school," thought Jumpo as he looked out of the window. "It's a bit lonesome, so I guess I'll dust some of the furniture for mamma."
He took a dust rag in each of his two front paws, and also one in his kinkytail, making three in all, and he went about the rooms knocking the dust off the furniture on to the floor, where no one would see it.
When Jumpo got tired of that he read a story book. He read about a big giant with a blue nose and how one day a yellow dwarf saw the giant asleep and painted his nose green and the birds used to think the nose was grass and they would nestle down on the giant and tickle him so that he sneezed like thunder booming in the sky.
"Well, it will be an hour yet before mamma or Jacko comes home," said Jumpo, as he looked at the clock after finishing the story. "What can I do next?" So he looked around but he couldn't see anything, and he was just going to knock some more dust off the furniture, when he heard some one crying out-of-doors.
"My! I wonder who that can be?" he thought. So he looked down from the front porch, and there on the ground at the foot of the tree was Buddy Pigg, the little guinea pig boy. And he was crying very hard.
"What's the matter?" asked Jumpo.
"Oh, a big mosquito has bitten me!" said Buddy, "and my leg is all swelling up from it, so that I can hardly walk."