"Now sit up nice and straight, children," said the owl school teacher one day, "and pay close attention. I am going to show you how to make paper chains, so you can decorate the Christmas trees with them when the time comes. I have shown you how to make paper cups, and this time it will be paper chains."
"And the paper cup was very useful," thought Jumpo, as he remembered the time he had given Uncle Wiggily a drink from it.
"I don't see how you can make chains out of paper," said Jacko in a whisper to his brother.
"Oh, you must not talk in school!" exclaimed the teacher quickly, "for it takes your minds off your lessons. Now look at me and do as I do."
But even when the teacher took out some squares of prettily colored paper and began cutting them in strips with her scissors, Jacko couldn't understand how she was going to make a chain that way.
"For chains are made of iron or steel or silver or gold, and not paper," he thought. "But I'll wait and see."
The teacher took a narrow strip of red paper, and she pasted the two ends together, making a little ring. Then she slipped another narrow strip of paper, colored green, inside the first red ring and she fastened the ends of the second strip together, making a second ring, right inside the first, like a watch chain. And so she went on until she had about forty-sixteen rings all fastened together, and that was a paper chain.
"Now you try to make one," said the owl teacher, and all the animal children did. Susie Littletail, the rabbit, made a very fine chain of the most beautiful colors, and her brother Sammie made two paper chains, while the Bushytail squirrel brothers made some yellow chains that looked like gold.
"You may each take some paper with you," spoke the teacher when school was nearly over, "and make some chains at home."
So they all went up to her desk to get the paper, but Jacko Kinkytail, the red boy monkey, was a little late because he couldn't get his book strap fastened. And all there was left for him was some black paper. All the pretty colored pieces had been given away.
"Never mind," said the teacher, kindly, "I'm sure Jacko will make a very good black paper chain. Now school is over. Run home."
So they all ran home. Suddenly Jumpo Kinkytail happened to think that his mamma had told him to go to the store on his way from school, and bring her a yeast cake.