“To whom?” asked Ben, in surprise.
“To Mr. Stubbs—the old fellow here in the cart, you know, that's been so good to me.”
Toby heard a sort of gurgling sound, saw the driver's body sway back and forth in a trembling way, and was just becoming thoroughly alarmed, when he thought of the previous night, and understood that Ben was only laughing in his own peculiar way.
“How did you know his name was Stubbs?” asked Ben, after he had recovered his breath.
“Oh, I don't know that that is his real name,” was the quick reply; “I only call him that because he looks so much like a feller with that name that I knew at home. He don't seem to mind because I call him Stubbs.”
Ben looked at Toby earnestly for a moment, acting all the time as if he wanted to laugh again, but didn't dare to, for fear he might burst a blood vessel; and then he said, as he patted him on the shoulder: “Well, you are the queerest little fish that I ever saw in all my travels. You seem to think that that monkey knows all you say to him.”
“I'm sure he does,” said Toby, positively. “He don't say anything right out to me, but he knows everything I tell him. Do you suppose he could talk if he tried to?”
“Look here, Mr. Toby Tyler”—and Ben turned half around in his seat and looked Toby full in the face, so as to give more emphasis to his words—“are you heathen enough to think that that monkey could talk if he wanted to?”
“I know I hain't a heathen,” said Toby, thoughtfully, “for if I had been some of the missionaries would have found me out a good while ago; but I never saw anybody like this old Mr. Stubbs before, an' I thought he could talk if he wanted to, just as the Living Skeleton does, or his wife. Anyhow, Mr. Stubbs winked at me; an' how could he do that if he didn't know what I've been sayin' to him?”
“Look here, my son,” said Ben, in a most fatherly fashion, “monkeys hain't anything but beasts, an' they don't know how to talk any more than they know what you say to 'em.”