“But I could easily loosen that string and get away if I wanted to,” Mappo thought as he played with the knot in his odd little fingers.  Monkeys can untie most knots, and a chain is about the only thing that will hold them.

The boy’s mother was afraid of Mappo at first, but the little monkey was so kind and gentle, that she grew to like him.  And Mappo was a very good monkey.  He did not bite or scratch.

The house where the boy lived was quite different from the circus tent, or the big barn where Mappo had first learned to do tricks.  There was an upstairs and downstairs to the house, and many windows.  Mappo soon learned to go up and down stairs very well indeed, and he liked nothing better than to slide down the banisters.  Sometimes he would climb up on the gas chandelier and hang by his tail.  This always made the boy laugh.

“See, my monkey can do tricks!” he would cry.

Then, one day, something sad happened.  Mappo was sitting near the dining-room window, which was open, and he was half asleep, for the sun was very warm.  The little monkey was dreaming, perhaps of the days when he used to sleep in the tree-house in the jungle, or he may have been thinking of the time when he went with the circus.

Suddenly he was awakened by hearing some music.  He looked out in the street, and there he saw a hand-organ man grinding away at the crank which made the nice music.  Mappo liked it very much.  It reminded him a little of the circus music.

And, as soon as the hand-organ man saw the monkey, he cried out: 

“Ha!  A monkey!  Just what I need.  My monkey has gone away, and I’ll take this new little monkey to go around with me and get the pennies in his cap.”

Then, before Mappo knew what was going to happen, the hand-organ man ran up to the open window, grabbed the little monkey off the sill, and, stuffing him under his coat, ran away down the street with him as fast as he could go.

“Let me go!  Let me out!” chattered Mappo, in his own, queer language.  The man paid no attention to him.  Perhaps he did not understand what Mappo meant, though hand-organ men ought to know monkey talk, if any one does.  At any rate, the man did not let Mappo go.  Instead, he carried him on and on through the streets, until he came to the place where he lived.

“Now I’ll put a chain and a long string on you, and take you around with me when I make music,” said the hand-organ man.  “You will have a little red cap to take the pennies the children give you.”

While he was thus talking the man thrust Mappo into a box, that was not very clean, and tossed him a crust of bread.

“I wonder if that is all I am to get to eat,” thought Mappo.  “Oh, dear!  I might better have stayed in the circus.  It was nice at the boy’s house, but it is not nice here.”

Mappo was shut up in the box, with only a little water, and that one piece of bread crust to eat.  And then the hand-organ man went to sleep.