But alas for the hopes of Mr. Martin that his neighbors would not again be troubled by the pets of the Curlytops. It was about a week after the animals had been brought from Uncle Toby's house that, as Mr. Martin was coming home from the store rather early one afternoon, he saw a crowd in front of the bakeshop of Mr. Capper, just around the corner from the home of the Curlytops.
"I hope that isn't a fire in Mr. Capper's bakery," thought Daddy Martin, for more than once hot grease had boiled over in the bakeshop and caused slight fires.
As Mr. Martin approached Mr. Capper's store he heard loud laughter from the crowd of men and boys in front of the show window.
"It can't be a fire, or they wouldn't laugh," said the father of the Curlytops. "I wonder what it is?"
He hastened on, and as he came within view of the bakery window he uttered an exclamation of surprise. For there, among the buns, eating them and playing among the other cakes, were several large white rats and mice.
"Look at that one big one stand up on his hind legs and nibble a bun just like a squirrel!" said a man watching the antics of the white rats and mice among Mr. Capper's buns. If this man had only known it, squirrels and rats belong to the same family, that called "rodents," only a squirrel has a much larger tail than a rat or a mouse.
"I wonder what in the world Mr. Capper lets those white rats stay in his bakeshop window for?" thought Mr. Martin, as he ran up. "They are not harmful, of course, but people will not like to eat bakery stuff after rats and mice, even if they are white, have run around them. It's a poor advertisement."
At that moment the baker himself, who had been out in his oven-room, came running into the shop. He gave one look at his window, saw the white rats and mice playing around in and nibbling his choice buns, and then the baker cried:
"Oh, who did this? Who played this trick on me and spoiled my buns? Who let those mice in there?"
"Didn't you do it yourself?" asked Mr. Martin, who knew the baker very well, having traded with him for a number of years.