"Oh, dear!" groaned Jacko.
"Oh, my!" exclaimed their mamma. "What poor, miserable little monkey boys you are to be sure!"
"But there isn't anything to do," grumbled the red monkey.
"And we can't go out because it is raining too hard," added the green monkey.
"Suppose you help me with the housework," suggested Mamma Kinkytail. "After we get the breakfast dishes washed I'm going to make a cake and a pudding, and you may help me. But mind!" she said, shaking her tail at Jumpo, "you mustn't let the eggs or the sugar or the milk fall out of the house, as you once did with the cocoanut."
"I won't," said Jumpo, and then he and his brother helped dry the dishes and set back the chairs, and when their mamma had swept the bungalow they dusted the piano. Then came the making of the cake and pudding. Of course, there were some dishes with nice sweet batter, and sugar and chocolate icing left in them, and Jacko and Jumpo cleaned these out so clean that there was hardly any need of washing them. By this time it was the dinner hour, and Mr. Kinkytail came home from the hand organ factory where he worked at making music.
But in the afternoon it still rained harder than ever, and the monkey brothers stood at the window and looked at the splashing drops, and cried "Oh, Dear!" so often that finally their mamma said:
"I'm going to telephone over for the Wibblewobble children to come and play with you. Those ducks won't mind the rain a bit, for it will run right off their backs. You can play in the house, and I can have some peace and quietness to get my mending done. I'll telephone right away."
So Mrs. Kinkytail telephoned, and Mrs. Wibblewobble said the duck children could come right over. Jacko and Jumpo watched for them at the window and soon they saw Jimmie and his two sisters paddling through the mud puddles.
"What shall we play?" asked Jacko, when the visitors had shaken the water off their feathers, after having flown up into the tree-bungalow.