“Shame on you for laughing,” cried the woman who wanted to tell the boy’s father. But it was no use to stop the crowd—they cheered and guffawed as they pressed up closer to the cage, where the monkey on his high perch was biting out pieces of David’s little cap, and throwing them off toward the bars, grinning dreadfully between each bite.
Joel rushed up to see the fun. He had stayed as long as he could at the cage of big snakes, Ben finally hauling him away, and now, with Polly and Jimmy, they hurried up to join Mrs. Pepper and Phronsie.
“What is it?” cried Joel, thrusting in his hot little face wherever he saw a crack of space to get it in. “Oh, what is it he’s got?”
“A boy’s cap bein’ et up,” said a man, stopping his laugh long enough to shoot this out.
“Oh, I want to see!” By a way Joel best knew would secure a good place, he was pretty soon worked in, till there he was in the front row with the other boys still screaming with the fun of the thing.
There the monkey sat on a high perch, biting very slowly now in order to make the cap last as long as possible. His little eyes were twinkling, and his paws were kept busy to hold the cap, and fight off the other monkeys, who now swarmed and chattered around him, in order to seize the beautiful thing that was making the people so noisy with delight.
“What is it he’s got?” cried Joel, wrinkling up his face trying to see the wad in the monkey’s paw.
“A boy’s cap—he twitched it off his head. Oh, Jiminy—see!”
The monkey, fearing that the other monkeys might be too many for him to hold his prize, took a last big bite from it, spit out the pieces, and threw them derisively right at the bars, and into Joel’s face pressed against them. One piece fell out at his feet; it said “—vid Pepper” just where Mamsie had marked it on the rim of the cap.
Joel’s brown hand closed convulsively over it, and he looked wildly around. Then he put down his head, and bolted right through the middle of the crowd.