what the joke
was about.

When Father Blossom hung the receiver up, he was still laughing. He
glanced up and saw Meg and Bobby.

"You'll get cold. Run back to bed," he said. "That was Sam telephoning.
What do you suppose happened? The cage of monkeys upset in the ring
and the door-catch broke and they're all loose! Sam said half the
audience chased them around the tent and it broke up the show."

"Did they catch them?" asked Meg, her eyes big with interest.

"Not one," answered her father. "Get into bed immediately, children.
Perhaps you'll meet monkeys on your way to school to-morrow."

"I wish we could," murmured Meg, cuddling sleepily into her warm bed.
"Wouldn't that be fun!"

"I'd like to catch a monkey," said Bobby to himself, as he climbed
into his bed in the next room. "Maybe he'd do tricks for me."

In the morning Meg and Bobby were out in the kitchen before breakfast,
getting from Norah the details of the monkeys' escape.

"'Deed then, I hope they catch every one of 'em--bad 'cess to 'em,"
said Norah indignantly. "Thieving, sly, little torments! Didn't they
claw Mrs. O'Toole's bonnet nigh off her head last night, to say
nothing of scaring her into fits? Don't say monkey to me!"

On their way to school the children found that the news of the
overturned monkey cage was known to the whole town. Not a boy who
didn't hope to be able to catch a monkey or two.

"There's a reward offered--five dollars for each monkey," Palmer Davis
reported when he met Meg and Bobby at the school door. "Yep--my cousin
told me; and he's in the Oak Hill _Daily Advertiser_ office, and I
guess he ought to know."

The majority of the children in Miss Mason's room stayed downstairs
till the "warning bell" rang and then hurried to their room to put
away their coats and hats in the cloak room. It was Miss Mason's rule
that they must be quietly in their seats, ready for the march to the
assembly hall, when the nine o'clock bell rang.

"It's too cold to hang around out here, so let's go up," suggested
Palmer Davis on this morning. "The warning bell will ring in a
minute, anyway."

Meg and Bobby were willing, especially as the air was sharp and chill,
cold enough for snow Meg thought, though of course it never snowed so
early in the fall, and they trooped happily upstairs. A number of boys
and girls were already in the room and Miss Mason was working at her
desk. Her hat was off and lay on one of the school desks, for she
meant