“Do you think, we can have Mr. Winkler’s monkey and Miss Winkler’s parrot in the show?” asked Bunny of Mart one day.

“I guess we can if Mr. Treadwell will write parts for them,” answered Mart.  “But the trouble is, you can’t be sure that Wango and the parrot will do the things you want them to.  The parrot might speak at the wrong time, and Wango might cut up by chasing his tail or hanging by his hind paws from the ceiling, and so make the audience laugh when we didn’t want them to.”

“That’s so,” agreed Bunny.  “Then I guess we’ll only just have our dog Splash in the play.  He’ll do whatever you tell him.”

“He certainly chases after the tramp in a funny way,” laughed Lucile.  “I should think Mr. Treadwell would be afraid the dog would tear his coat.”

“Oh, Splash only bites the old piece of cloth,” said Mart.  “It’s a good trick.”

A little while after this Bunny saw Mart going out to the garage with some ropes and straps under his arm.  The garage was partly a barn, for the Shetland pony was kept in it and some hay for Toby, the pony, to eat was also stored in the same place.

“What are you going to do?” Bunny asked the boy acrobat.

“Practice a few of my new tricks that I’m going to do in the play,” Mart answered.  “There’s a new kind of back somersault I want to turn, and a new kind of flipflop I want to make.  You know in the play I do some tricks in front of the stage barn to make the farmers laugh.  I’m supposed to be a boy who has run away from a circus.”

“We knew a boy who really ran away from a circus once,” said Bunny.  “And he was in our show when we had one down at grandpa’s farm.”

“Well, I’m going to do a few circus tricks, as well as I can, though I never was in a tent show,” said Mart.

“Please, may I come and watch you?” asked Bunny.

“Yes,” answered Mart kindly.

So the acrobat and Bunny went out to the little barn, and there, with ropes and straps, Mart made a trapeze, such as you have often seen on the stage or in a circus.  On the floor of the barn Mart spread a pile of hay.

“Is that for our pony to come out and eat?” Bunny wanted to know.

“Oh, no,” answered Mart.  “That’s to make something soft for me to fall on, in case I slip.  In the circus the performers have nets under them to catch them in case they slip.  But you can’t have nets in a garage very well, so I use the hay.”

Bunny watched his friend swing to and fro, sometimes by his hands and sometimes by his toes, on the trapeze in the barn.  And Mart was so sure and careful that he didn’t slip once.  So he didn’t fall down on the hay.

“Did you ever fall?” asked Bunny, as he watched the young acrobat swing to and fro, with his head down.

“Oh, yes indeed!  More than once.  And once I broke my leg so I couldn’t go on the stage for over a month.”

“I don’t want to break my leg,” said Bunny.