By this time the other children had become quieter, having seen that nothing much had happened.  The janitor was sent for and he put the boxes up again, this time nailing them together so they would not fall over.

“But you must not climb on top of them again,” said Miss Earle.

“No’m, I won’t,” promised Johnnie.

“Now start over again, Freddie,” the teacher told the little blue-eyed chap, and once more he walked out and pretended to look for Mary.  Then Flossie walked out, and this time the play went off very well.  Mother Goose came on when it was her turn and she helped Boy Blue and Miss Muffet look for Mary and the lost horn.  It was finally found in Jack Horner’s pie, which was a big one made of a shoe box.  And Johnnie, as Jack Horner, pulled out the horn instead of a plum.  His sore thumb did not bother him much.

“Well, did you like the play?” the teacher asked the other children, who had only looked on.

“It was fine!” they all said.  “We’d like to see it again.”

“Well, perhaps you may,” returned Miss Earle.  “Would you like to act it before the whole school?” she asked of Flossie, Freddie and the other little actors and actresses.

“Yes, teacher!” they said in a chorus.

“Then you shall.”

A week later the play was given on the large stage in the big room where there was a real curtain and real scenery.  The little Mother Goose play went off very well, too, for the children knew their parts better.  And Johnnie Wilson did not fall down off a pile of boxes.

The only thing which happened, that ought not to, was when Flossie sang a little song Miss Earle wrote for her.

When she had finished, Flossie, seeing Nan out in the audience, stepped to the edge of the stage and asked: 

“Did I sing that all right, Nan?” for Nan had been helping her little sister learn the piece.

Every one laughed when Flossie asked that, for, of course, she should not have spoken, but only bowed.  But it was all right, and really it made fun, which, after all, was what the play was for.

“We’ll have to get up a play ourselves, Nan,” said Bert to his sister when school was out, and the Mother Goose play had ended.  “I like to act.”

“So do I,” said Nan.

“I’d like a play about soldiers and pirates,” went on Bert.

“I know something about pirates,” cried Tommy Todd.  “My father used to tell me about them.”

“Say, you’d do fine for a pirate!” cried Bert “You know a lot about ships and things; don’t you?”

“Well, a little,” said Tommy.  “I remember some of the things my father told me when he was with us.  And my grandmother knows a lot.  Her husband was a sailor and she has sailed on a ship.”

“Then we’ll ask her how to be pirates when we get ready for our play,” Bert decided.

“How is your grandma?” Nan inquired.

“Well, she’s a little better,” said Tommy, “but not very well.  She has to work too hard, I guess.  I wish I were bigger so I wouldn’t have to go to school.  Then I could work.”