SLIDER GOES SLIDING
Teddy and Janet, sleeping in their rooms on the side of their house
nearest to the home of Mrs. Blake, were the first to be awakened by the
screams of the frightened lady. For that Mrs. Blake was frightened anyone
could tell who heard her cry.
"Come and take the fuzzy burglar! Take the fuzzy burglar out of my room!"
she exclaimed again and again.
By this time Teddy had jumped out of his bed and had run to his window.
At the same time Janet, in the next room, had jumped out of her bed and
had run to her window. Both children looked across the yard to the home
of Mrs. Blake. They could see her, in the moonlight, standing at her
window.
"What's the matter, Curlytops?" called their mother, across the hall. She
had been awakened, not so much by the cries of Mrs. Blake as by the
movements of Ted and Janet. "What's the matter?" asked Mrs. Martin.
"There's a funny burglar over in Mrs. Blake's house, and she wants
someone to come and get it," answered Janet.
"No, she didn't say _funny_ burglar--she said _fuzzy_!" declared Ted.
"Well, anyhow, it's a _burglar_," declared Janet.
And from the other house again came the appeal:
"Patrick! Mary Ann! Mr. Martin! Somebody! Come and get the fuzzy
burglar!"
By this time Mr. Martin, who had gotten up, had been told by his wife
that something was wrong in Mrs. Blake's house. He put on some clothes
and hurried downstairs, carrying a flashlight in one hand and his
revolver in the other.
"Oh!" exclaimed Janet, who, with Teddy, watched her father go, "Daddy's
going to shoot the funny burglar."
"_Fuzzy_ burglar!" corrected Ted.
But Janet had covered her ears with her hands, so she would not hear her
father shoot his revolver--in case he found anything to shoot at--so the
little girl did not hear what her brother said.
Mr. Martin ran across the lawn to the front porch of Mrs. Blake's house.
By this time several other neighbors had been awakened be the lady's
screams, and some of the men came out, partly dressed, to see what was
going on.
"Come in, Mr. Martin," said Patrick, as he opened the door for the father
of the Curlytops. Patrick was Mrs. Blake's gardener.
"What is it, Patrick?" asked Mr. Martin, holding his revolver in one hand
and the flashlight in the other. "Where is the burglar?"
"I didn't see anything, Mr. Martin," answered the gardener. "I heard Mrs.
Blake scream, and I got up, and so did Mary Ann, the cook, but we can't
find anything!"
"But there _is_ a burglar here!" said Mrs. Blake from the head of the
stairs, where she now stood. "I was awakened by a noise in my room, and
when I looked at the window, I saw in the moonlight, sitting on the sill,
a fuzzy little old man. He's a burglar, I'm sure of it, and I wish the
police would come!"
"I think there are enough of us here now, Mrs. Blake, to look after two
or three burglars without the police," said Mr. Martin, as he glanced at
several neighbors who had come in. "Let's have a look around," he went
on. "I fancy, if there was a burglar, that he has gotten away by this
time."
"I hope he has gotten away, and will never come back," said Mrs. Blake.
"But I wish you gentlemen would look, just the same."
So Mr. Martin and the other men neighbors, with Patrick, the gardener, to
help, began a search of the house. They went to Mrs. Blake's room first.
"I don't see any burglar," said Mr. Martin. He did not need his electric
flashlight now, as the house had been lighted from top to bottom by Mrs.
Blake's two servants.
"There he is! There he is!" suddenly cried Mrs. Blake. "Under that big
chair. There's the fuzzy burglar!"
Mr. Martin and two or three other men rushed over to the chair at which
Mrs. Blake pointed. Mr. Martin stooped down, and then he laughed.
"What's the matter?" asked Mr. Tyndall, a neighbor from across the
street.
"I'll show you," answered Mr. Martin, as he thrust his arm under the
chair. "Come out of there, Jack!" he went on, and out from beneath the
chair he pulled--Jack, Uncle Toby's pet monkey! Poor Jack was as much
frightened as Mrs. Blake had been, but he cowered down in Mr. Martin's
arms and looked up into the face of the father of the Curlytops as if
saying:
"Please don't whip me! I didn't mean to be bad!"
The men who had come in to help hunt a burglar looked at the fuzzy monkey
in Mr. Martin's arms, and then burst out laughing.
"Yes, it must have been him that I saw perched on my window," said Mrs.
Blake. "In my alarm, it did look like a fuzzy, little old man, and of
course I thought it was a burglar. I was foolish. It was a very small
burglar. I didn't know you kept monkeys, Mr. Martin."
"I only keep one," he said, "and I don't exactly keep that, myself. It's
one of the children's pets. It used to belong to my Uncle Toby, and we
just brought Jack home this afternoon. We put him in the barn with the
white mice and the alligator----"
"Don't tell me there's an _alligator_ running around loose!" cried Mrs.
Blake. "Oh, a monkey is bad enough, but an _alligator_----"
"It's only a little one," said Mr. Martin. "And I'm sorry Jack got loose
and frightened you. I'll see, after this, that the pets don't get out at
night."
"Oh, I'm sure I don't want to spoil the children's pleasure in the
least," went on Mrs. Blake. "But I didn't know you had such a menagerie
next door to me, Mr. Martin."
"We didn't have until to-day--or rather, yesterday, for it is now past
midnight," Mr. Martin explained. "My Uncle Toby left me his collection of
animals when he went away suddenly, and Ted and Janet say they are going
to have a circus."
"Save me a ticket!" cried Mr. Hanson, who lived two or three houses down
the street.
"And I want one," added Mr. Fenton. "If the Curlytops give a circus I
want to come to it!"
"So do it!" cried several other neighbors, who had turned out to see what
all the excitement was about.
"I'll tell Teddy and Janet," promised Mr. Martin, as he carried Jack out
of Mrs. Blake's house, much to the relief of that lady, though she was
rather fond of animals in general.
So the excitement quieted down, and after it was all over a policeman
came along, one of the neighbors having telephoned in the first alarm.
But there was nothing for the officer to do.
"Now, Curlytops," said Mr. Martin, at breakfast the next morning when the
excitement of the night was being talked over, "if you are to keep Uncle
Toby's pets here, we must be careful that they do not bother the
neighbors. Your own dog and cat are very good, and make no trouble. But
with a monkey, a parrot, another dog and cat, to say nothing of the
alligator and the white mice, we may cause a lot of trouble to our good
neighbors. And we wouldn't want to do that."
"What do you want us to do, Daddy?" asked Ted. He had just fed the two
dogs--Skyrocket and Top, while Janet had poured out some milk for
Turnover and Snuff, the two cats.
"We must make cages that can be locked at night, or else we must make
sure that the barn is tightly closed," said his father. "I don't
suppose, during the day, that there will be much trouble. It is at night
we must be careful. No one likes to be awakened by seeing a monkey on the
window sill."
"I wouldn't care," said Teddy.
"Well, ladies like Mrs. Blake don't care for such thrills," returned Mr.
Martin, with a laugh. "So we must be sure that all the members of our
menagerie are safely caged each night. I shall depend on you Curlytops
for that."
"We'll be careful!" promised Teddy.
"I'll help you lock up every night," added Janet.
"Well, then I will leave the pets to you Curlytops," said their father.
"It is on your account that your mother and I are keeping them instead of
selling them, and while they will be some care, we do not mind if you do
your share."
"The first thing I'm going to do," said Teddy, when he and Janet were
left to themselves, their father going to his store, "is to see how many
tricks Top can do."
"Isn't it too bad we haven't Tip?" said Janet. "They were so cute
together!"
"Yes," agreed her brother. "But maybe I can make Skyrocket let Top ride
on his back, and teach 'em some other tricks. Come here, Top!" he called
to the white poodle with the black spot on top of his head. "Let's see
you walk on your hind legs."
Top was very willing to do this, and while Ted and Janet sat on boxes in
the barn, with their other pets around them, Uncle Toby's poodle went
through his performance. When he had walked on his hind legs in a little
circle he suddenly sneezed.
"Oh, maybe he's catching cold!" cried Janet.
"No, I think that was a trick," suggested Teddy. "Sneeze, Top!" he
ordered. Surely enough, the poodle sneezed, and he would do it every time
Teddy or Janet told him to.
"Oh, he knows two tricks, besides the one he does with Tip," Teddy said
in delight. "Maybe he does a lot more. I wish Uncle Toby had written them
down, so we'd know what the dogs can do for our circus."
"We can write to Uncle Toby, when daddy gets the address, and ask about
the tricks," Janet said.
"Yes," agreed Teddy, "we can do that. I wonder if Slider can do any
tricks?" he asked, when Top had been rewarded for his efforts with a
little bone to gnaw.
[Illustration: SLIDER WENT SLIDING DOWN THE SMOOTH SLANTING BOARD. "The
Curlytops and Their Pets." Page 102]
"Do alligators do tricks?" asked Janet, as she reached in through the
bars of Mr. Nip's cage and scratched the head of the red and green
parrot.
"I guess they do," Teddy answered. "If they don't we'll teach our Slider
to do a trick. I'm going to take him out of his tank."
The cage of the little pet alligator was a sort of tank, in the bottom of
which was some water, and in this were little pebbles, like those in some
goldfish bowls. The tank stood near a window in the barn where the sun
shone in, for Mr. Martin had told the Curlytops that their pets who lived
in warm, or tropical, countries must be kept where it was warm and sunny.
That was what they were used to in their native lands.
So Slider had a warm, sunny place, and now Teddy took the scaly creature
out of the tank and put him on a box, where the sun could shine on the
long-tailed fellow.
As it happened, there was a long, smooth board resting on the upper edge
of this box and extending down to the barn floor. Teddy had laid the
board slanting fashion on the box when he was making room for the cage of
Jack, the monkey.
For a little while, after he had been placed in the warm sun on top of
the box, the alligator remained quiet, slowly blinking his eyes. Then he
began to crawl.
"That isn't much of a trick," declared Janet.
"Oh, I haven't started to teach him a trick yet," her brother answered.
"I'm trying to think what an alligator can do best."
But Slider, as he was called, because he seemed to slide around in such a
slow, easy fashion, took matters into his own claws, so to speak.
He crawled around on his box top and then managed to clamber up on the
slanting board, one edge of which rested on the box.
"I wonder if he is going to slide down-hill," said Janet in a low voice,
as if she did not want to disturb the little alligator.
And then, just as if he had made up his mind to do that very thing,
Slider wiggled along until he was only holding to the edge of the slanting
board by his two hind feet, while his long tail was only partly on the
box. A moment later, giving himself a hitch like a boy getting his sled
over the top of the hill, Slider went sliding down the smooth, slanting
board.
Down he slid until he reached the barn floor, and as there was some
smooth straw at the point where the board rested, Slider slid across this
straw for several feet.
"Oh, did you see that?" cried Janet.
"See it? I should say I did!" cried Teddy. "Slider slid all right! That's
going to be his trick! I'll make a longer board slide, and I'll put the
lower end in a pan of water, so when Slider slides down he'll make a
splash! That will be a fine trick for the circus! Come on, Slider, slide
again!"
Teddy was just lifting up his pet alligator, intending to put him on the
top of the slanting board, when Trouble was heard calling:
"Oh, come an' 'ook at Snuff! Come an' 'ook at Snuff! He's doin' suffin'
funny!"