“The man in the other automobile didn’t give you enough room to pass, did he, Mr. Brown?” asked the actor, when the danger was over.

“Not quite,” was the answer.  “We’ll go home by another road that is wider, but I took this one because it is the shortest way.”

“I hope I didn’t do wrong to cry out that way,” Lucile said, when they were on their way again.

“No, you didn’t do any harm,” said Mr. Brown.  “I was a bit alarmed myself at first.  But we’re all right now.”

“We were in a railroad wreck once,” went on Lucile.

“Did the trains all smash up?” asked Bunny, his eyes wide open.

“Yes, they were badly smashed,” answered Lucile.  “I don’t like to think about it.  Mart was hurt, too!”

“Was you?” cried Bunny, forgetting, in his excitement, to speak correctly.  “Say, you’ve had lots of things happen to you, haven’t you?”

“Quite a few,” answered the boy actor.  “I’ve traveled around a good bit.  But I think I like it here better than anywhere I’ve been.”

“I do too,” said Lucile.  “Traveling everyday makes one tired.”

A little later they reached Wayville, and Mr. Treadwell told Mr. Brown where to go in the automobile to look at the scenery.  It was stored away, for the company that had “busted up,” as Mart sometimes called it, had no further use for it.

“Oh, look!  Here’s a little house!” cried Bunny, when with their father and the others he and Sue had entered the big room where the scenery was stored.

“It’s got a door to it,” said Sue, “but the window is only make believe,” and she found this out when she tried to stick her fat little hand out of what looked like a window in the side of the small house.

“Most things on a stage in a theater are make believe,” said the man who pretended to be different persons.  “You’ll find the scenery isn’t as pretty when you get close to it as it is when you see it from the other side of the footlights.”

This the children noticed was true.  The scenery was made of painted canvas stretched over a framework of wood.  And the colors were put on with a coarse brush and was very thick, as Bunny and Sue saw when they went up close.

“But it looked so pretty in the Opera House,” complained Bunny.

“That’s because you were farther off, and because the lights were made to shine on it in a certain way,” explained Mart.  “It will look just as pretty again when you use it in your show.”

Bunny and Sue were not so sure of this, but they were willing to wait and see.  Mr. Brown and Mr. Treadwell looked over the scenery.

As the actor had said, there were three “sets” as they are called.  One was a scene painted to look like a meadow, with a big green field, a stream of water and, in the distance, cows eating grass.  Of course the cows were only pictured ones as was the grass and stream.

The barnyard scene showed more cows and the end of a barn, and in this barn there was a real door that opened and shut.  Mr. Treadwell explained that the boy and girl actors could go through this door to enter upon or leave the stage during the play.