There were about a dozen children who were to take part in the little play.  They were to dress up with clothes which they could bring from home.  Freddie had a blue suit, so he looked exactly like Boy Blue.

One Friday afternoon the little play was given in the school room.  The teacher had strung a wire across in front of her platform, and had hung a red curtain on this.  Flossie, Freddie and the other players were behind the curtain, while the remaining children sat at their desks to watch the play.

“Are you all ready now?” asked Miss Earle of the children behind the curtain.  “All ready!  I’m going to pull the curtain back in a minute.  Remember you are to walk out first, Freddie, and you are to make a bow and then look to the left, then to the right and say:  ’Oh, I wonder where she can be?’ Then along comes Flossie, as Little Miss Muffet, and she asks you whom you are looking for.”

“Yes, and then I say I’m looking for Mary, who had a little lamb, for I lent her my horn, and she went away with it to help Bo-Peep find her sheep; and now I can’t blow my horn to get the cows out of the corn,” Freddie said.

“That’s it!” exclaimed the teacher in a whisper, for they had all talked in low voices behind the curtain, so the other children would not hear them.  “You remember very well, Freddie.  Now we will begin.”

The curtain was pulled back, and Freddie walked out from one side where some boxes had been piled up to look like a house.

“Oh, I wonder where she can be,” said Freddie, looking to the left and to the right.  “Where can she be?”

“Whom are you looking for?” asked Flossie, coming out from the other side of the platform.

“For Mary, who had a little lamb,” went on Freddie.  “I lent her my horn and——­”

But just then there was a crash, and down tumbled the pile of boxes that was the make-believe house, and with them tumbled Johnnie Wilson, who was dressed up like Little Jack Horner.

“Oh, I’ve hurt my thumb!  I’ve hurt my thumb!” he cried.  “Now I can’t pull the plum out of the pie!”

CHAPTER VIII

SNOOP IN TROUBLE

Some of the children laughed.  Some screamed.  Others looked as if they wanted to cry.  Of course the play came to an end almost before it had started.

“Oh Johnnie, why did you do that?” cried Miss Earle, hurrying out in her Mother Goose dress, and picking up the little fellow.  “How did it happen?”

Johnnie had started to cry, but, finding that he was not hurt much except on his thumb, he stopped his tears, and said: 

“I climbed up on the pile of boxes so I could see better, and they fell over with me.”

“They weren’t put there to be climbed on,” the teacher said with a smile.  “I’m glad it is no worse.  You came on the stage before it was your turn, Johnnie.  Now we’ll try it over again.”