“I’m going to tell mother.  She’ll know how to get him loose.  Once he was stuck in the rain water barrel, when it was empty, and my mother got him out.  She can do ’most everything.  I’ll go for her.”

“Yes, I guess you’d better,” agreed Bunny.  “We’ve got a lot to do to get ready for the play, and I can’t do anything while I’m stuck fast here.”

“It’s a good thing this isn’t in the play, or everybody in the audience would be laughing at us,” said Harry Bentley.

“I—­I guess I won’t get in the trough when we give our play real,” decided Bunny.  “I might get stuck then.  I’ll think up some other trick to do.”

Sue was about to hurry away, intending to call her mother, when some one was heard coming up the stairs that led to the loft over the garage.  A moment later the head and shoulders of Mart Clayton came into view.

“Oh, Mart!” cried Sue, for she and Bunny felt quite well acquainted with the boy and girl performers, “Bunny is stuck in the trough and he can’t get out!”

“Is there water in it?” asked Lucile’s brother quickly, as he jumped up the rest of the stairs.

“No!” answered a chorus of boys and girls.  “Not a drop.”

“Oh, then he’s all right,” said Mart.  “I’ll soon have him out.”

And he did.  It was very simple.  Mart simply pulled Bunny’s coat off, over the little fellow’s head, and then Bunny was small enough to slip out of the trough himself.  He had so wiggled and squirmed after getting into the tin thing like a bath tub that his coat was all hunched up in bunches.  This kept his shoulders from slipping out, but when the coat was off everything was all right.

“What did you get in there for?” asked Mart, when Bunny was on his feet once more.

“I was practising my act,” was the answer.  “I’m going to be a farmer boy in the play, and then I hide in the trough so I can scare an old tramp that comes to get a drink of water.  Only there isn’t going to be any water in the trough when I do my act,” said Bunny.  “I wanted there to be some, but mother won’t let me.”

“I guess we can do that act just as well without water as with it,” said Mart with a smile.  “An audience likes to see real water on the stage, but we can use some in the pump, I guess.  Now then, boys and girls, are you all going to be in the new play, ‘Down on the Farm?’”

“Yes, I am!  I am!  So’m I!” came the answers, and Mart laughed and put his hands over his ears.

“I guess we’ll have plenty of actors and actresses,” he said.  “Mr. Treadwell will be out here this afternoon and tell you something of the little play he is going to write for you—­for all of us, in fact, for my sister and I are going to be in it with you.  But now suppose I tell you a little about a stage, and how to come on and go off.”

“Is Bunny going to get stuck again?” asked Sue.  “If he is I’m going to tell mother so she can help get him out.”