"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."
"Talcum powder," replied the guinea pig. "It's a white, smooth powder, and it comes in a tin box and smells nice."
"What smells, the powder or the box?" asked Jumpo.
"The powder smells, of course," said Buddy. "Have you any?"
"Yes, I guess so," answered Jumpo. "Let's look in the bathroom. Mother isn't home to-day," so into the bathroom those two animal boys went, and they hunted all over for the talcum powder.
"There it is, up on that shelf!" said Buddy at last. "I can tell by the cover of the box. You just get it down and smell of it."
So Jumpo curled up his tail, reached it up and wound it around the box just as an elephant in the circus winds his trunk around a peanut, and the monkey boy lifted down the talcum powder box.
"Fine!" said Jumpo. "Have a smell yourself. It's talcum powder, all right."
So they decided that it was, but when Jumpo tried to get some powder out none would come. There were little holes in the top of the box, but they were stopped up somehow or other, and there poor Buddy was suffering from the mosquito bite, and they couldn't get powder to put on it.
"I know what I'll do!" exclaimed Jumpo. "I'll just take off the whole cover and then the powder will come out fine."
So he sat down on the bathroom floor beside Buddy, and they both tried to get the cover off the box. But it was on very tight, and at last Jumpo said:
"I'm going to knock it off with the hair brush!"
So he pounded on the top of the tin talcum powder box. Once, twice, three times he pounded and then, all of a sudden--
"Piff! Paff! Poof!" The air was full of a fine, white powder just like snow. It drifted and sifted all over the bathroom, and scattered itself all over Buddy and Jumpo. Into their fur it went, all over Jumpo's fuzzy little face, and even down to his hairy paws. And Buddy was just as bad. You see the cover came off the box so quickly that they didn't either of them have time to get out of the way.