acko will make a very
good black paper chain. Now school is over. Run home."

So they all ran home. Suddenly Jumpo Kinkytail happened to think that
his mamma had told him to go to the store on his way from school, and
bring her a yeast cake.

"Will you come with me?" Jumpo asked his brother.

"Oh, I don't want to," answered Jacko. "But I'll wait here in the woods
for you."

"All right," said Jumpo, so off he started to the store.

Well, Jacko sat down on a hollow stump, taking good care not to fall in
it and get his long tail all tangled up. He had his squares of black
paper with him, and also a pair of scissors and some paste which the
teacher had given him.

"I think I will start to make my paper chain now," he said to himself
when he had been sitting there a little while. "Then I won't have to do
it at home, and Jumpo and I can go for a little ride in our auto."

So he cut the black paper into strips, and made rings of them, fastening
them together, one inside the other, until he had a nice long chain.

"Ha! That is very fine!" thought the monkey boy. "I will have it all
done when Jumpo comes back."

He was holding up the chain by the end, to see how long it was, when,
all of a sudden he heard a noise in the bushes. At first he thought it
was his brother, coming with the yeast cake, but, somehow it didn't
sound like the green monkey. It was a crashing-bashing-rashing-smashing
sort of a noise, and Jacko began to be afraid, thinking it might be the
burglar fox.

And then, before he could stand up and sing a song about four-and-twenty
blackbirds baked in a rice pudding, out from the bushes came the savage
skillery-scalery alligator with the double jointed tail. Oh, but that
alligator was savage! And how he glared at Jacko with his mean, green
eyes. Then the bad creature smacked his jaws together like an automobile
running over a pair of roller skates.

"Ah, ha!" cried the alligator. "At last I have a monkey for supper. I
would like two--a red one and a green one--but as long as there is only
a red one I'll eat him."

"Are you really going to eat me?" asked Jacko, dropping the paper chain
and the paste and the scissors. He was real scared.

"I am," said the alligator, "and if your brother was here I'd eat him
also."

Then Jacko was glad his brother hadn't come back. Nearer and nearer came
the alligator, with his mouth wide open. And, oh! how frightened Jacko
was. He didn't know what to do.

"Please, M