"Did you miss any of your lessons today?" asked Jacko, as he twined his tail around a hickory nut on the ground, and picked it up so he could eat it—eat the nut, not the ground, you understand, of course.

 

"I missed one example," answered Jumpo, "but it was very hard."

 

"What was it?" inquired Jacko, as he cracked the hickory nut in his strong teeth.

 

"It was this," spoke² his brother: "If a boy has a chocolate ice cream cone³, and his sister has two, how many oranges can you buy for a bag of peanuts when a stick of peppermint⁴ candy breaks in three pieces and one of them falls inside a lemon? Don't you think that's a hard example, Jacko?"

 

"Indeed it is. Let me see, I think the answer is a pound of chocolate drops."

 

"I thought it was a piece of cherry pie," went on the little green monkey, "but the teacher said it was a dozen of eggs, so I missed."

 

"Never mind, as long as you didn't have to stay in," said Jacko. "Now let's hurry on and see who will get home first. You go one way and I'll go the other, and we'll race."

 

This suited Jumpo all right, so off he started by the path that led through the woods, while Jacko took the road that led past the house of Grandfather Goosey Gander. And when Jacko reached there the old gentleman was just looking for some one to go to the store for him to get a pound of sugar. So Jacko went, and he earned a penny. Then he hurried home. But Jumpo hadn't yet reached there, and I'll have to tell you what happened to him.

 

For a while the little green monkey boy hurried on through the woods. He was thinking how surprised Jacko would be to find his brother home ahead of him, and Jumpo was even planning to hide behind the rain water barrel and jump out to make-believe scare Jacko. Then, all of a sudden, as Jumpo went past a big rock he saw a nice big yellow orange on the ground.

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