THE HOUSE IN THE WOOD
Reading edition
"I wonder where I'm going to stay to-night," said Little Jack Rabbit to himself one late afternoon, after traveling all day with his knapsack on his back and his striped candy cane in his right paw, and just then he came in sight of a little wooden house. So he stopped and tapped on the door, rat-a-tat-tat, very softly, you know. And when the door opened a little monkey dressed in a red cap and a green coat said, "What do you want?"
"I beg your pardon," answered the little rabbit, "but, you see, it's getting late and I'm looking for a place to sleep."
"Well, come right in," said the little monkey, and after Little Jack Rabbit had hung his knapsack and striped candy cane on the hatrack in the hall he followed the monkey into the sitting room.
Well, after a little while he told the monkey all about the Old Bramble Patch and Danny Fox and Mr. Wicked Weasel, and lots of other things, too, which I haven't room in this story to mention. And when he had finished the monkey said he had once belonged to a man who owned a hand organ and went about the country playing music for pennies, and sometimes for nothing.
"But that was long ago," said the little monkey, "for one day my master beat me so cruelly that I ran away to the wood, and by and by I built this little house, where I have lived ever since." Just then a knock came at the door and who do you suppose was outside? Why, the Yellow Dog Tramp, the little rabbit's friend, you remember.
"Come in," said the monkey, for the Yellow Dog Tramp had stopped at his house lots of times, you know.
"Goodness me," said the Yellow Dog Tramp, after he had hung up his old tattered hat in the hall. "I was nearly arrested to-day by a policeman cat. They don't allow tramping any more. Everybody must work, so I stopped in to see if you didn't want a handy man about the place." And this made the little monkey laugh like everything, and pretty soon the Yellow Dog Tramp got dreadfully sulky. He dropped his ears and hung his tail, and then he began to whine,
"Now just because I've been a tramp Through sunshine and through fog, You needn't laugh, nor joke and chaff 'Cause now I want a job; For Uncle Sam says to each man, 'Now that the war is over, Each do your part with willing heart, And we shall be in clover!'"
"That's the way," shouted Little Jack Rabbit, and on the next page you shall hear what happened after that.