here, Mr. Toby Tyler"--and Ben turned half around in his seat and
looked Toby full in the face, so as to give more emphasis to his
words--"are you heathen enough to think that that monkey could talk if
he wanted to?"

"I know I hain't a heathen," said Toby, thoughtfully, "for if I had been
some of the missionaries would have found me out a good while ago; but I
never saw anybody like this old Mr. Stubbs before, an' I thought he
could talk if he wanted to, just as the Living Skeleton does, or his
wife. Anyhow, Mr. Stubbs winks at me; an' how could he do that if he
didn't know what I've been sayin' to him?"

"Look here, my son," said Ben, in a most fatherly fashion, "monkeys
hain't anything but beasts, an' they don't know how to talk any more
than they know what you say to 'em."

"Didn't you ever hear any of them speak a word?"

"Never. I've been in a circus, man an' boy, nigh on to forty years, an'
I never seen nothin' in a monkey more'n any other beast, except their
awful mischiefness."

"Well," said Toby, still unconvinced, "I believe Mr. Stubbs knows what I
say to him, anyway."

"Now don't be foolish, Toby," pleaded Ben. "You can't show me one thing
that a monkey ever did because you told him to."

Just at that moment Toby felt some one pulling at the back of his coat,
and looking round he saw it was a little brown hand, reaching through
the bars of the air-hole of the cage, that was tugging away at his coat.

"There!" he said, triumphantly, to Ben. "Look there! I told Mr. Stubbs
if he wanted anything more to eat, to tell me, an' I would give it to
him. Now you can see for yourself that he's come for it." And Toby took
a doughnut from his pocket and put it into the tiny hand, which was
immediately withdrawn. "Now what do you think of Mr. Stubbs knowing what
I say to him?"

"They often stick their paws up through there," said Ben, in a
matter-of-fact tone. "I've had 'em pull my coat in the night till they
made me as nervous as ever any old woman was. You see, Toby, my boy,
monkeys is monkeys; an' you mustn't go to gettin' the idea that they're
anything else, for it's a mistake. You think this old monkey in here
knows what you say? Why, that's just the cuteness of the old fellow: he
watches you to see if he can't do just as you do, an' that's all there
is about it."

Toby was more than half convinced that Ben was putting the matter in its
proper light, and he would have believed all that had been said if, ju