-cent store.
"All right, and I'll take good care of the house," said Jumpo. And he
felt quite pleased to think that he was old enough to take care of a
whole big house all by himself.
"I wonder what I can do to make the time pass quickly until Jacko comes
home from school," thought Jumpo as he looked out of the window. "It's a
bit lonesome, so I guess I'll dust some of the furniture for mamma."
He took a dust rag in each of his two front paws, and also one in his
kinkytail, making three in all, and he went about the rooms knocking the
dust off the furniture on to the floor, where no one would see it.
When Jumpo got tired of that he read a story book. He read about a big
giant with a blue nose and how one day a yellow dwarf saw the giant
asleep and painted his nose green and the birds used to think the nose
was grass and they would nestle down on the giant and tickle him so that
he sneezed like thunder booming in the sky.
"Well, it will be an hour yet before mamma or Jacko comes home," said
Jumpo, as he looked at the clock after finishing the story. "What can I
do next?" So he looked around but he couldn't see anything, and he was
just going to knock some more dust off the furniture, when he heard some
one crying out-of-doors.
"My! I wonder who that can be?" he thought. So he looked down from the
front porch, and there on the ground at the foot of the tree was Buddy
Pigg, the little guinea pig boy. And he was crying very hard.
"What's the matter?" asked Jumpo.
"Oh, a big mosquito has bitten me!" said Buddy, "and my leg is all
swelling up from it, so that I can hardly walk."
"Oh, that's too bad," said Jumpo. "Come up here and I will put some
stuff on to make it better."
"I can't climb that high tree," said Buddy, sad like.
"No more you can!" exclaimed Jumpo. "Wait a minute."
So Jumpo let down a basket fastened to a string and Buddy got in it--I
mean he got in the basket, not the string, you understand, of course.
Then Jumpo pulled him up.
"Now let's see where that mosquito bite is," said the monkey boy, and
Buddy showed him. "I should say it was a big one!" cried Jumpo. "That
needs some witch hazel on it right away."
Well, Jumpo put a lot of witch hazel on the bite, but that only seemed
to make it worse.
"I know what's good for it," said Buddy. "It's some stuff my mamma
uses."
"What is it?" asked Jumpo.
"Talcum powder," replied the guinea pig. "It's a white, smooth powder,
and it com
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