"Indeed we didn't!" cried Teddy. "We can take the broken buns and feed them to Skyrocket and Top, and Mr. Nip and Jack will eat them, too," he said to his father. "It will be just as good as buying stale bread for the monkey and the parrot, Daddy. I guess they'll like buns better."
"I shouldn't be surprised if they did," laughed Mr. Martin. "Well, as you say, Teddy, it will save buying stale bread." Some of the pets were fed on this, and now the broken buns would take its place for a few meals.
By this time the crowd began leaving the bakery, as the excitement was over. Teddy and Jimmy picked up the last of the rats and mice, putting them back in the mended cage.
"And make sure the door of the cage is fastened," Mr. Martin said to Teddy, as the baker was paid for the buns. "We don't want the creatures getting loose again."
"It's good and tight," Teddy said. "They won't get out again except when we take them out to do circus tricks."
Carrying the cage of white mice and rats between them, Teddy and Jimmy walked down the street in front of Mr. Martin, and soon the pets were safely back in the barn.
"I'm a crack-crack-cracker!" cried the green, red and yellow parrot, as the boys entered. The talkative bird whistled, at which sound Skyrocket and Top, who were asleep in one corner of the barn, awakened and began to bark loudly.
"Your parrot whistles just like one of us fellows," said Jimmy to Teddy.
"Yes, he does," admitted the Curlytop chap. "I have been trying to think what tricks we could make him do in the circus. But the trouble is he doesn't always talk or whistle when you want him to. And when you don't want him to he nearly always does it."
"Well, anyway, he'll be nice to look at in the pet circus," said Jimmy. "And in the regular circus they have animals and birds to look at, as well as the kind that do tricks."