As soon as the school was dismissed, the boys hurried into the yard,
while Grayson, who had lately seen as much of marble-playing as he cared
to, strolled off for a walk. The marble ring was quickly scratched on
the ground, and the players began work. But the boys did not take as
much interest in the game as they had expected to, for a rival
attraction had unexpectedly appeared on the ground since recess: two
rival attractions, more properly speaking, or perhaps three, for in a
shady corner sat an organ-grinder, on the ground in front of him was an
organ, and on top of this sat a monkey. Now to city boys more than ten
years of age an organ-grinder is almost as uninteresting as a scolding;
but Laketon was not a city, organ-grinders reached it seldom, and
monkeys less often; so fully half the boys lounged up to within a few
feet of the strangers, and devoured them with their eyes, while the man
and the animal devoured some scraps of food that had been begged at a
kitchen door.

Nobody can deny that a monkey, even when soberly eating his dinner, is a
very comical animal, and no boy ever lived, not excepting that good
little boy Abel, who did not naturally wonder what a strange animal
would do if some one disturbed him in some way. Which of Mr. Morton's
pupils first felt this wonder about the organ-grinder's monkey was never
known; the boys soon became too sick of the general subject to care to
compare notes about this special phase of it; but the first one who
ventured to experiment on the monkey was Bert Sharp, who made so
skillful a "plumper" shot with a marble, from the level of his trousers
pocket, that the marble struck the monkey fairly in the breast, and
rattled down on the organ, while the monkey, who evidently had seen boys
before, made a sudden jump to the head of his master, and then scrambled
down the Italian's back, and hid himself so that he showed only as much
of his head as was necessary to his effort to peer across the
organ-grinder's shoulder.

"Maledetta!" growled the Italian, as he looked inquiringly around him.
As none of the boys had ever before heard this word, they did not know
whether it was a question, a rebuke, or a threat; but they saw plainly
enough that the man was angry, and although most of them stepped
backward a pace or two, they all joined in the general laugh that a
crowd of boys are almost sure to indulge in when they see any one in
trouble, that any one of the same boys would be sorry