Part 10 (2/2)

”Oh, are you going to let Snap come to school again?” asked Edna Blake.

”No, hardly that,” the teacher answered with a smile, ”but we shall have a little play. I'll fix some curtains across the platform where my desk stands, and that will be the stage. You children--at least some of you--will be the actors and actresses. It will be a very simple little play, and I think you can do it. If you do it well perhaps we may give our play out on the large platform in the big room before the whole school.”

”We had a play in Uncle Dan's barn once in the country,” said Flossie.

”I was in it, too,” spoke up Freddie, ”and I fell down in a hen's nest and got all eggs.”

Even the teacher laughed at this.

”Well, we hope you'll not fall in any hen's nest in our little school play,” said the teacher.

She picked out Flossie, Freddie, Alice Boyd, Johnnie Wilson and some others to be in the play, and they began to study their parts.

The play was to be called ”Mother Goose and her Friends,” and the children would take the parts of the different characters so well known to all. The teacher was to be Mother Goose herself, with a tall peaked hat, and a long stick.

”And will you ride on the back of a goosey-gander?” Freddie asked. ”It's that way in the book.”

”No, I hardly think I shall ride on the back of a gander,” answered the teacher. ”But we will have it as nearly like Mother Goose as we can. You will be Little Boy Blue, Freddie, for you have blue eyes.”

”And what can I be?” asked Flossie.

”I think I'll call you Little Miss m.u.f.fet.”

”Only I'm not afraid of spiders,” Flossie said. ”That is I'm not afraid of them if they don't get on me. One can come and sit down beside me and I won't mind.”

”I guess for the spider we'll get a make-believe one, from the five-and-ten-cent store,” said Miss Earle, the teacher. ”Now I'll give out the other parts.”

There were about a dozen children who were to take part in the little play. They were to dress up with clothes which they could bring from home. Freddie had a blue suit, so he looked exactly like Boy Blue.

One Friday afternoon the little play was given in the school room. The teacher had strung a wire across in front of her platform, and had hung a red curtain on this. Flossie, Freddie and the other players were behind the curtain, while the remaining children sat at their desks to watch the play.

”Are you all ready now?” asked Miss Earle of the children behind the curtain. ”All ready! I'm going to pull the curtain back in a minute.

Remember you are to walk out first, Freddie, and you are to make a bow and then look to the left, then to the right and say: 'Oh, I wonder where she can be?' Then along comes Flossie, as Little Miss m.u.f.fet, and she asks you whom you are looking for.”

”Yes, and then I say I'm looking for Mary, who had a little lamb, for I lent her my horn, and she went away with it to help Bo-Peep find her sheep; and now I can't blow my horn to get the cows out of the corn,”

Freddie said.

”That's it!” exclaimed the teacher in a whisper, for they had all talked in low voices behind the curtain, so the other children would not hear them. ”You remember very well, Freddie. Now we will begin.”

The curtain was pulled back, and Freddie walked out from one side where some boxes had been piled up to look like a house.

”Oh, I wonder where she can be,” said Freddie, looking to the left and to the right. ”Where can she be?”

”Whom are you looking for?” asked Flossie, coming out from the other side of the platform.

”For Mary, who had a little lamb,” went on Freddie. ”I lent her my horn and----”

But just then there was a crash, and down tumbled the pile of boxes that was the make-believe house, and with them tumbled Johnnie Wilson, who was dressed up like Little Jack Horner.

<script>