JASPER. 117

 

Jasper contrives to put some bread in a basket. He is in difficulty.

 

the floor. ‘Then he went to a corner of the room where
there was a sort of open cupboard, called a dresser. He
jumped up upon a chair which stood near the dresser, and
from the chair he climbed up to the lower shelf of the
dresser, which was much wider than the shelves above,
being intended to serve the purpose of a table. On one of
the upper shelves there were two or three loaves of bread.
Jasper contrived to push one of them down from its place
to the shelf where he was standing, and from this shelf to
the floor.

“Then he jamped down himself, and worked the loaf
of bread along on the floor to the place where he had left
the basket. He turned the basket over upon its side, and.
then pushed the loaf into it. He then took up the basket,
by the handle, in his mouth, and went to the window.

“ Here, however, he encountered an unexpected diffi-
culty, for he found that he could not jump up to the
window-sill, while holding the loaded. basket in his mouth.
Whenever he attempted to do so, the bottom of the basket
would strike upon the sill, and throw him back to the
floor. So he put the basket down, and jumped up to the
window without it, and then turning round, looked down
to the basket still remaining on the floor, and whined.
But this did no good. There was nobody to lift the
basket up to him, and so he soon saw clearly it was not
possible to pet it out at the window, and that he must
therefore contrive some other plan.”

Here Beechnut set all the children to conjecturing,
what the plan was which Jasper finally hit upon, to get
the bread out of the house. One guessed that he went
and opened the door; but Beechnut said, No, the latch