Well, the Twinkle Twinkle Star didn't sing me to sleep and so I can't
tell you about Billy Bunny and the woolly sheep as I said I would in the
last story, but I will tell you something else if you'll only wait five
hundred short seconds. And this is what it's going to be about:
The organ grinder's monkey
Who wears a little cap,
Is always kept so busy
He cannot take a nap.
He's dancing to the music,
And picking up the dimes;
But oftener it's nickels.
And pennies most the times.
As soon as Billy Bunny heard the "Star-Spangled Banner," for that was
the tune which the old organ grinder was playing, he pricked up his ears
and hopped out of the Old Briar Patch, and by and by he came up to the
monkey, who held out his little red cap.
"Here's a carrot cent for you," said the little rabbit, but the organ
grinder scowled a deep, gloomy scowl and said:
"Me no lika da mun!" But what could Billy Bunny do? And as the organ
grinder kept on scowling a deep, gloomy scowl, the little rabbit opened
his knapsack and looked through it. And pretty soon he found an apple
pie, and when the organ grinder saw it he stopped grinding the music and
put out his hand.
And in a very few minutes there wasn't any pie to be seen anywhere
around for miles and miles, and the organ grinder had a lovely smile on
his face! And then he played that pretty song called "In this sweet pie
and pie there are apples fresh and dry," and after that he swung the
organ over his back and the monkey jumped on top and off they went to
grind out more tunes for money.
But the little rabbit didn't go with them. No, siree. For if he had to
pay a whole apple pie for a tune he'd rather go another way, even if he
couldn't hear the lovely music, for you can't grind out apple pies the
way you can tunes.
Well, by and by, after a while, not so very long, he came to a river and
he couldn't get across, so he looked all about him to find a little
horse; but there wasn't any horse and there wasn't any boat, so the
little rabbit said, "Well, I guess I'll have to float" So what did he do
but find an old plank and then floated over on it to the other bank.
Now I don't know what is the matter with my typewriter that it didn't
make a verse out of all these rhymes, but it didn't--it just went along
in a prosy way, and so you'll have to make a poem out of them yourself,
for I have no more room in this story.