CHAPTER XII.
A CURIOUS MISCHANCE AT BULLFROG.
PROFESSOR THUNDER freely admitted that Nickie the Kid was by far the best Missing Link he had ever met.
"There ain't your equal in the whole profession, my boy," he said, clapping the man-monkey heartily between the shoulder blades, "and if you go on improving your interpretation and developing the character, by the Lord Harry, I believe it'll be worth our while to do a world's tour one of these days." In consideration of Mahdi's perfections the Professor had twice generously raised his salary by half a-crown a week.
"There isn't a Woolly Man o' the Woods or a Wild Man from Borneo now on the roads' drawing the salary you are, Crips," said the Professor.

"Two pounds two and six a week is princely pay for a Missing Link.

Let me tell you there are stars playing Romeo and Hamlet that aren't getting such good money, my boy." Nickie certainly deserved his munificent salary, as he was the best draw in the museum, and was improving the attractiveness of the show weekly, with bright ideas and new schemes for inciting the interest of the Professor's bucolic customers.

It was Nickie suggested the idea of a ride through Bullfrog town ship in character.
"I'm afraid, my boy," said the Professor, "it's risky--very risky.

You'll be giving the game away one of them days, and once it gets about that Professor Sullivan Thunder's marvellous and only-living Missing Link is a fake, the metropolitan press will be down on me like a ton of bricks, and I'll come to running a Punch and Judy show at baby parties in my old age." "My dear Professor, have a bit of enterprise," replied the Missing Link, "we are not drawing well! Bullfrog wants waking up.