"Don't let him wind his tail on me!" begged Mun Bun, hiding behind his mother's skirts.
"Can he play a hand-organ?" asked Violet.
The children were laughing so hard, and asking so many questions as they crowded around Laddie, that their mother exclaimed:
"Oh, my dear six little Bunkers! please be quiet a minute until I can hear what Laddie has to say. Tell us where you got such a cute little riddle!"
"I got him with peanuts," Laddie said. "He was up in a tree and I saw him, and I held out some peanuts in my hand and he came down and sat on my shoulder and ate 'em and then I put him under my coat and he liked it and I brought him home."
"But where did you find him?" asked Aunt Jo. "In what tree?"
"Oh, just down by the corner at the end of this street," answered Laddie with a wave of his hand.
"Mercy," gasped Aunt Jo, "are monkeys beginning to make their homes in the trees of the Boston streets?" and she and Mother Bunker laughed.
"But was he up a tree?" asked Russ.
"Yes, he was," Laddie went on. "First I thought it was a cat, but when I saw him hang by his tail I knew it wasn't a cat."