“I think that will be enough, thank you, Bert,” the teacher said.  “You had better take the dog home now.”

Bert did so, and saw to it that Snap was well chained.

“We like to see you,” said Bert as he was leaving to go back to his class, “but you must not come to school after us, Snap.”

At recess, which was nearly over when Bert got back to school, the children talked and laughed about Snap’s visit.

“I wish your dog would come to school every day,” said Alice Boyd to Flossie.

“Yes, wouldn’t it be fun to have him do tricks,” cried Johnnie Wilson.

But Snap did not get loose again, and he soon got used to having the children away most of the day.  But how glad he was when they came home, and he could romp and play with them!

One day Flossie’s teacher said to the class: 

“Now, children, you have been very good this week, and you have known your lessons well, so I think it is time we had a little fun.”

“Oh, are you going to let Snap come to school again?” asked Edna Blake.

“No, hardly that,” the teacher answered with a smile, “but we shall have a little play.  I’ll fix some curtains across the platform where my desk stands, and that will be the stage.  You children—­at least some of you—­will be the actors and actresses.  It will be a very simple little play, and I think you can do it.  If you do it well perhaps we may give our play out on the large platform in the big room before the whole school.”

“We had a play in Uncle Dan’s barn once in the country,” said Flossie.

“I was in it, too,” spoke up Freddie, “and I fell down in a hen’s nest and got all eggs.”

Even the teacher laughed at this.

“Well, we hope you’ll not fall in any hen’s nest in our little school play,” said the teacher.

She picked out Flossie, Freddie, Alice Boyd, Johnnie Wilson and some others to be in the play, and they began to study their parts.

The play was to be called “Mother Goose and her Friends,” and the children would take the parts of the different characters so well known to all.  The teacher was to be Mother Goose herself, with a tall peaked hat, and a long stick.

“And will you ride on the back of a goosey-gander?” Freddie asked.  “It’s that way in the book.”

“No, I hardly think I shall ride on the back of a gander,” answered the teacher.  “But we will have it as nearly like Mother Goose as we can.  You will be Little Boy Blue, Freddie, for you have blue eyes.”

“And what can I be?” asked Flossie.

“I think I’ll call you Little Miss Muffet.”

“Only I’m not afraid of spiders,” Flossie said.  “That is I’m not afraid of them if they don’t get on me.  One can come and sit down beside me and I won’t mind.”

“I guess for the spider we’ll get a make-believe one, from the five-and-ten-cent store,” said Miss Earle, the teacher.  “Now I’ll give out the other parts.”