ed at each other.

"Oh, we can't let them go now!" exclaimed Teddy.

"We're just getting to love them!" his sister added.

"And we haven't found out any tricks yet that the white mice can do,"
Teddy went on. "We haven't even named 'em!"

"Well, I suppose if the neighbors don't complain I shouldn't," admitted
Mr. Martin. "But with the monkey scaring Mrs. Blake, and the alligator
scaring Mrs. Johnson----"

"They weren't very _much_ scared," interrupted Ted. "Please let us keep
Uncle Toby's pets! We want to give a circus."

"We'll see," said Mr. Martin. "I hope nothing more will happen, though,
to annoy the neighbors."

"We'll watch our pets so they won't get out," promised Ted and Janet.

The next few days were spent by the Curlytops in getting better
acquainted with the animals that had been brought from Uncle Toby's. They
liked their new pets more and more the more they saw of them. Of course
they wished they could get Tip back, but that trick dog seemed to have
vanished.

Daddy Martin put an advertisement in the paper, and offered a reward to
whoever would bring Tip back, but there were no answers--at least none
that amounted to anything. It is true that several men and boys came with
strange dogs they thought answered the description of the missing Tip,
but none of the animals was the pet so much wanted.

Nor was anything heard of the missing youth "Shorty." He seemed to have
disappeared with the poodle, and the police said they believed Shorty
knew where Tip was, and had, perhaps, taken him away in order to sell
him.

"Well, of course we have enough animals without Tip to give a show," said
Teddy. "But I'd love to get Tip back. And I guess Top is lonesome without
him."

"I guess so, too," added Janet.

But if Top was lonesome he showed no signs of it after one or two days.
He made friends with Skyrocket, as Snuff did with Turnover, and the dogs
and cats lived happily together.

But alas for the hopes of Mr. Martin that his neighbors would not again
be troubled by the pets of the Curlytops. It was about a week after the
animals had been brought from Uncle Toby's house that, as Mr. Martin was
coming home from the store rather early one afternoon, he saw a crowd in
front of the bakeshop of Mr. Capper, just around the corner from the home
of the Curlytops.

"I hope that isn't a fire in Mr. Capper's bakery," thought Daddy Martin,
for more than once hot grease had boiled over in the bakeshop and caused