“I hope you never do,” answered Mart.  “But, of course, as you aren’t going on a trapeze you won’t fall and break anything.”

“I wish I could go on a trapeze,” murmured Bunny.  “I could do some of the things you do I guess.”

“I’m afraid not,” laughed Mart, with a shake of his head.  “It isn’t as easy as it looks, and you are not big enough.  If you do your somersaults and part of a flipflop in the play, as you are going to do, you’ll make a hit, Bunny.”

“Do you mean I’ll hit the floor?” asked the little boy.

“No,” laughed Mart.  “Though if you aren’t careful that may happen.  But when I say you’ll make a ‘hit’ I mean that the audience will like the tricks you do and they’ll clap.”

“Like they did in the circus?” asked Bunny.

“Just like that,” said Mart.

Bunny sat and watched his friend.  It looked so easy when Mart swung to and fro on the rope, twisting and turning this way and that.

“I could do it,” said Bunny to himself.

When Mart was called to the house by his sister he forgot to take down the ropes and straps that made the trapeze in the barn.  They hung right before Bunny Brown’s eyes.

“I believe I can do it!” said Bunny to himself, as he looked at the swinging trapeze.  “Anyhow, if I do fall, there’s some soft hay.”

And then Bunny did what he should not have done.  He pulled some boxes and rolled a barrel over to the middle of the barn floor until he had a sort of platform under the trapeze Mart had put up to practice on.  Then Bunny climbed up, got hold of the swinging bar and swung his legs over.  Then something queer happened, for the first thing Bunny Brown knew, there he was, hanging upside down with his legs over the trapeze and his head pointing to the pile of hay in the middle of the barn floor.

CHAPTER XVII

SUE’S QUEER SLIDE

Bunny Brown was at first so frightened, when he found himself swinging upside downside from Mart’s trapeze, that he did not know what to do.  He was too frightened even to call out, as he nearly always did when he found himself in trouble.  Nearly always his first thought was of his father or mother.  But this time he hardly knew what to do.

It had all happened so suddenly.  He had not meant to get upside downside this way.  All he wanted to do was to sit on the trapeze, as he had often sat in a swing, and sway to and fro.  But something had gone wrong, something had slipped, and there Bunny was, hanging by his knees with his head toward the floor.

Then Bunny had a thought that he might let go with his clinging legs and drop to the pile of hay.  That was what the hay was for—­to fall on.  It was a thick, soft pile, but, somehow or other, Bunny did not like to think of falling on it head first.

“If I could only land on it with my hands or feet it wouldn’t be so bad,” thought the little fellow to himself.  “But if I hit on my head——­”