By this time it was quite dark, and the fire looked very pretty, blazing just on the edge of the woods near where the monkey's tree-house was built. When there were some nice, glowing, hot coals in the blaze Jumpo got ready to roast the marshmallow candies. He stuck one on the sharp stick, and held it close to the fire.
But, oh, dear me, hum suz dud! Jumpo held the candy too close, and the first thing you know it caught fire and melted and fell off the stick down into the blaze and was burned up! Wasn't that too bad?
"I'll not hold the next one so close," he said, and he was careful; so the second candy turned a nice golden brown and puffed up nearly twice as big as it had been before.
"Oh, I know what I'll do!" suddenly exclaimed Jumpo. "I'll toast a lot of them and take them in the house for mamma and papa and Jacko."
So he roasted the candies as fast as he could until he had quite a pile of them in a box. As they were very hot he pushed them off the end on the pointed stick, using a piece of bark for a pusher.
Jumpo was so busy that he didn't look behind him. If he had done so he would have been very much frightened. For there, creeping out of the bushes, was the burglar fox, with his big tail and sharp teeth. And he was creeping, creeping up toward Jumpo to eat him. But Jumpo didn't know a thing about it. He was so busy roasting marshmallow candies.
All of a sudden the fox accidentally stepped on a stick, and it broke in two pieces and made a loud noise. Jumpo heard it and turned around. Then, by the light of the fire, he saw the fox coming toward him.
"Ah, ha! Now I have you!" cried the bad creature, and he made a spring to catch the monkey boy. Jumpo didn't wait to be caught, you may be sure of that. He jumped, too, and the green monkey happened to tip over the box of toasted marshmallow candies as he leaped to one side. He upset them all over the ground, and then what do you s'pose happened?
Why, that bad fox landed right in the midst of the hot, soft candies, and they got all over his feet, like sticky flypaper, and they burned him. Oh, how he howled! The more he tried to get the candies off, the tighter they stuck. The fox turned a somersault, and then the candies got all over his fur, until he looked like a marshmallow fox. And, of course, he couldn't catch Jumpo then, for he was so stuck up.