A SURPRISE
Mr. Treadwell, who was closely watching Bunny Brown and his sister Sue,
to see that they did their first part in the play all right, looked up
in surprise as he heard the strange voice speaking about the tramp,
calling the dog and whistling.
"Please don't do that," said the actor. "That isn't in the play. Who
said it?"
"No--nobody--I guess," replied Charlie Star.
"Well, somebody must have said it, for I heard it," replied Mr.
Treadwell, with a smile. "Don't do it again! Now Bunny and Sue try it
again. Make believe, Sue, that you see a tramp coming down the road. I'm
to be the tramp, you know, and on the night of the show I'll really
dress up like one. Now go on."
Bunny looked at Sue and Sue looked at Bunny. The other children in the
play also looked at one another. They were sure none of them had spoken,
and yet Mr. Treadwell seemed to think the voice had been one of theirs.
"Oh, here comes a tramp!" cried Sue once more, and Bunny was just about
to repeat his part, when, again, came the strange, shrill voice, saying:
"No tramps allowed! No tramps wanted! Give him a cold potato and let him
go!"
"Oh, I'm not going to stay here!" suddenly cried Sadie West.
"There is something funny here," said Bunny Brown. "None of us is
talking and yet we hear a voice."
Mr. Treadwell, who had been looking over the papers on which he had
written down the different parts of the play, looked up quickly when he
again heard the strange voice. He was just about to ask who had called
out when something fluttered down out of the stage tree which was to be
set up in the orchard scene. The tree was off to one side, in what are
called in theater talk, the "wings." Out of the tree fluttered something
with flapping wings.
"It's a big owl!" cried George Watson.
"Don't let it get hold of your hair or it'll pull it all out!" called
Sue. "Owls feets gets tangled in your hair," and she put her hands over
her head.
"Pooh! They don't either!" cried Helen Newton.
The children were rushing here and there about the stage, and Mr.
Treadwell was trying to see where the strange bird was going to light,
when Bunny Brown cried out:
"'Tisn't an owl at all! It's Mr. Jed Winkler's parrot!"
And when the fluttering bird had come to rest on top of the stage barn,
it was seen that it was just what Bunny said--a big, green parrot. There
it perched, picking at a make believe shingle with its hooked bill, and
calling in its shrill voice:
"No tramps allowed! No tramps allowed! Call the dog! Here, Towser! Give
him a cold potato and let him go! Bow wow!"
Then how all the children laughed!
"Why, it surely is Mr. Winkler's parrot!" exclaimed Mr. Treadwell, as he
looked at the green bird. "He was safe in his cage when I came out this
morning, but he must have got loose. I'd better go and tell Miss
Winkler, for she likes the parrot as much as she doesn't like Jed's
monkey. She told me she was teaching the parrot to say some new words,
but I didn't know they were about tramps or I would have known right
away it wasn't any of you children speaking during the play. Come on
down, Polly!" called the actor to the green bird.
But Polly seemed to like it up on top of the stage barn, and from the
top of the roof it cried again:
"No tramps! No tramps allowed! Towser, get after the tramps!"
The children laughed again, and Mr. Treadwell said:
"It wouldn't do to have the parrot in the play, or he'd spoil the first
scene. Now I'd better go and tell Miss Winkler where she can find the
bird."
But he was saved this trouble, for just then Miss Winkler herself came
up the stairs leading from the hall at one side of the hardware store.
"Is my parrot here, Mr. Treadwell?" she asked the actor who boarded at
her house. "I let him out of his cage when I was cleaning it a while
ago, and when I looked for him, to put him back, he was gone. One of my
windows was open and he must have flown out. Some of my neighbors said
they saw a big bird flying toward the hardware store, so I came over.
Mr. Raymond and I couldn't find him downstairs, and he told me to look
up here. Have you seen Polly?"
The big, green bird answered for himself then, for he cried out:
"Look out for tramps!"
"Oh, there you are!" exclaimed Miss Winkler. "Aren't you ashamed of
yourself, Polly, to fly off like that? You'll catch your death of cold;
too, coming out this wintry weather! Here, come to me!"
She held out her hand, and the parrot fluttered down to one finger. Miss
Winkler scratched the green bird's head, and the parrot seemed to like
this.
"No tramps allowed!" he cried.
"I taught him to say that!" said Miss Winkler. "I thought it would be a
good thing for a parrot to say. Often tramps come around when Jed isn't
at home, and if they hear Polly speaking they'll think it's a man and
go away. Now, Polly, we'll go home!"
"No tramps allowed!" said the bird again.
"I hope my parrot didn't spoil the play," said Miss Winkler to Mr.
Treadwell and the children.
"Oh, no," answered the actor. "We didn't know he was in here, and when
he began talking I thought it was one of the boys or girls speaking out
of turn. But he did no harm."
"I'm glad of that," said the elderly woman. "A parrot is a heap sight
better than a monkey, I tell Jed. He ought to teach Wango to talk, and
then he'd be of some use!"
The children laughed as she went downstairs with the parrot on her
finger, and Sue said:
"A monkey would be funny if he could talk, wouldn't he?"
"I should say so!" exclaimed Mr. Treadwell. "But now, children, we'll
get on with the play."
Miss Winkler took her parrot home and shut him, or her, up in a cage.
Sometimes "Polly" was called "him," and again "her." It didn't seem to
matter which. The bird had got out of an open window when Miss Winkler
was busy in another room, and, like the monkey, had gone to the store
of Mr. Raymond, not far away.
I need not tell you about the practice for the play, as it took so long
for each boy and girl to learn his or her part, and how to come on and
go off the stage at the right time. At the proper place I'll tell you
all about the play, but just now I'll say that for several days there
was hard practice with Mr. Treadwell, Mart, and Lucile to help, or
"coach," as it is called, the children.
"Do you think we'll be ready by Christmas?" asked Bunny one day.
"Oh, surely," answered the actor. It was planned to have the play, "Down
on the Farm," given Christmas afternoon, and the money was to go to the
Home for the Blind in Bellemere, and not the Red Cross.
"Oh, it's snowing again!" cried Bunny Brown, as he ran into the house
one afternoon, when he and Sue came home from school. "May we take our
sleds out, Mother?"
"Yes, I think so," answered Mrs. Brown.
"Where's Lucile?" asked Sue. "Can't she come and sleigh ride with us?"
"She and Mart are out in the pony stable," answered Sue's mother. "Your
father let Mart come home early from the office, and he and his sister
have been out in the barn ever since. I can't say what they're doing.
Maybe you'd better go and see."
"Come on, Sue!" cried Bunny Brown. "Maybe they're practicing some new
acts for the play."
But when Bunny and his sister entered the stable where the Shetland pony
was kept, a sound of hammering was heard.
"Are you here, Mart?" called Bunny.
"Yes," was the answer. "Come and see what Lucile and I have made for you
and Sue!"
Bunny and his sister hurried into the room where the little pony cart
stood, and there they saw something that made them open their eyes in
delight.