With a shrill chatter the monkey dropped Trouble's cap, which he was trying to make stick on his own head, and a moment later he jumped down from the chandelier and scampered into a box at the side of the room.
"That's where he belongs!" said Mrs. Watson. "He's always afraid of that feather-duster. Maybe he thinks it's a big eagle coming to bite his tail. Anyhow, show him the feather-duster whenever you want to quiet him."
"That's a good thing to know," said Mr. Martin, when it was a little quieter in the room, because Jack, the monkey, had stopped chattering. "But what shall we do about the parrot on my wife's shoulder?"
"Oh, Mr. Nip is all right. He's very gentle," said the housekeeper. "Uncle Toby named him Mr. Nip because he used to nip and bite when he first came. But Uncle Toby soon cured him of that. Mr. Nip is a nice polly."
"I'm a crack! I'm a crack! I'm a crack-crack-cracker!" shrieked the parrot, and then he flew from Mrs. Martin's shoulder to the regular perch, near the little cage of the monkey—the "cubby-hole," as Mrs. Watson called it.
"Thank goodness!" sighed the mother of the Curlytops.
"You scared, Mother?" asked Trouble, who was now wishing the monkey would come back, for after his first fright, the little fellow rather liked the fuzzy chap.
"Only a little," said Mrs. Martin, for she thought if the Curlytops were to have anything to do with Uncle Toby's pets, it would not be well for her to say they frightened her.
"I 'ike 'em all," remarked Trouble, while Janet was rubbing the big Persian cat and Ted was playing with the two dogs. "Uncle Toby nice man to have all nanimals 'ike dis!" and he looked around the room. Surely there were quite a number of animal pets there.
"How in the world did my uncle ever come to have so many?" asked Mr. Martin. "And what in the world are we going to do with them?"