Skin me and sell my hide, what do you think it was? Just a small chunk of ivory, carved to represent a man with a monkey’s head. It had a little coat of colored beads tied where its waist was meant to be, and its eyes were two shiny green stones. And that was all.
“Well,” cried Minkie, “this is a surprise. At first sight, I don’t think much of a ju-ju, but that may be only my beastly ignorance, as the man said when he tried to boil a china egg.”
CHAPTER II
PRINCE JOHN’S STRANGE ALLY
Told by Dandy, the Terrier
I MADE a mistake once, and nipped a tramp’s wooden leg. Since then, I look before I take hold. But even a poodle could see that this thing was old bone, though its eyes glinted like Tibbie’s in the dark, and there was a smell of grease about its beaded kilt. And, talking of kilts, there’s a bare-legged fellow who comes here every summer and struts up and down the road, making the beastliest row with some sort of instrument all pipes and ribbons. Wow! don’t I change his tune if I get out before anybody can catch me!
“Why, it’s a baby’s toy,” said I, seeing that Minkie was rather taken with it.
“Let’s have a look,” said a voice I hated, and Tibbie walked up Bobby’s neck, and perched between his ears.
“Hello!” cried I, in my most sarcastic snarl, “are you there? And what is this acrobatic business? Is it a circus, or what?”