Part 11 (1/2)

”Oh, I've hurt my thumb! I've hurt my thumb!” he cried. ”Now I can't pull the plum out of the pie!”

CHAPTER VIII

SNOOP IN TROUBLE

Some of the children laughed. Some screamed. Others looked as if they wanted to cry. Of course the play came to an end almost before it had started.

”Oh Johnnie, why did you do that?” cried Miss Earle, hurrying out in her Mother Goose dress, and picking up the little fellow. ”How did it happen?”

Johnnie had started to cry, but, finding that he was not hurt much except on his thumb, he stopped his tears, and said:

”I climbed up on the pile of boxes so I could see better, and they fell over with me.”

”They weren't put there to be climbed on,” the teacher said with a smile. ”I'm glad it is no worse. You came on the stage before it was your turn, Johnnie. Now we'll try it over again.”

By this time the other children had become quieter, having seen that nothing much had happened. The janitor was sent for and he put the boxes up again, this time nailing them together so they would not fall over.

”But you must not climb on top of them again,” said Miss Earle.

”No'm, I won't,” promised Johnnie.

”Now start over again, Freddie,” the teacher told the little blue-eyed chap, and once more he walked out and pretended to look for Mary. Then Flossie walked out, and this time the play went off very well. Mother Goose came on when it was her turn and she helped Boy Blue and Miss m.u.f.fet look for Mary and the lost horn. It was finally found in Jack Horner's pie, which was a big one made of a shoe box. And Johnnie, as Jack Horner, pulled out the horn instead of a plum. His sore thumb did not bother him much.

”Well, did you like the play?” the teacher asked the other children, who had only looked on.

”It was fine!” they all said. ”We'd like to see it again.”

”Well, perhaps you may,” returned Miss Earle. ”Would you like to act it before the whole school?” she asked of Flossie, Freddie and the other little actors and actresses.

”Yes, teacher!” they said in a chorus.

”Then you shall.”

A week later the play was given on the large stage in the big room where there was a real curtain and real scenery. The little Mother Goose play went off very well, too, for the children knew their parts better. And Johnnie Wilson did not fall down off a pile of boxes.

The only thing which happened, that ought not to, was when Flossie sang a little song Miss Earle wrote for her.

When she had finished, Flossie, seeing Nan out in the audience, stepped to the edge of the stage and asked:

”Did I sing that all right, Nan?” for Nan had been helping her little sister learn the piece.

Every one laughed when Flossie asked that, for, of course, she should not have spoken, but only bowed. But it was all right, and really it made fun, which, after all, was what the play was for.

”We'll have to get up a play ourselves, Nan,” said Bert to his sister when school was out, and the Mother Goose play had ended. ”I like to act.”

”So do I,” said Nan.

”I'd like a play about soldiers and pirates,” went on Bert.