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Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue Giving a Show, a novel by Laura Lee Hope |
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Chapter 20. The Dress Rehearsal |
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_ CHAPTER XX. THE DRESS REHEARSAL Bunny Brown, who had been listening to the piano music of the blind man, looked quickly at Lucile as she cried out about Uncle Bill. For Bunny remembered how much the actress girl and her brother had wanted to find their blind uncle, so he might tell them where their other uncle and aunt were. Sue just said: "O-oh!" "Uncle Bill!" cried Mart, in the same sort of wondering voice as had his sister. "Yes, that's our Uncle Bill!" he went on, as the blind man, who had been playing, came over toward them. There was a strange look on his face, and except for a queer look about his eyes, one would hardly have known he was blind. "Who is calling me?" he asked. "I seem to know those voices, though I have not heard them for a long time. Who is it?" Lucile and Mart stepped forward. Mr. Brown was right behind them, and Bunny and Sue were near their father. Mr. Harrison, who was in charge of the Home, looked on in surprise. "Do you know Mr. Clayton?" he asked Lucile and Mart. "Yes, he is our uncle," Mart answered in a low voice, but, low as it was, the blind piano player heard. Holding out his hands toward the young theatrical players he cried, "Now I know those voices. Lucile! Mart! I have found you at last!" "And we have found you!" cried Lucile. "Oh, how wonderful!" "Can you tell us where Uncle Simon and Aunt Sallie are?" asked Mart. "We've lost track of them, and we were stranded after the show failed. We didn't know where to find you, and----" "Say, your trouble all came together, didn't it?" cried the blind man. "But now, perhaps, it is all over. Let me sit down with you, and then we'll have a long talk." "But do you know where Aunt Sallie Weatherby is?" asked Lucile. "Yes, of course! I have her address," said the blind Mr. Clayton. By this time he had managed to walk up to Mart, clasping his hands. Then he found Lucile and kissed her. For, though he was blind, Mr. Clayton could tell by the sound of a person's voice just where they stood in a room, and walk over to them. "Oh, how glad I am to find you again!" he said, as he felt around for a chair and sat down. "I have been waiting for a letter from Mr. Jackson so I might find you, but he has been a long time writing, and since my last letter to him I came to this place." "We don't know where Mr. and Mrs. Jackson are," said Lucile. "They left us, after the company broke up, and we haven't heard from them since. But we didn't know you were here!" "You weren't the last time we inquired," added Mart. "We knew you were in some such place as this, but Mr. Brown asked and no one here had heard of you." "That's because I only came the other day," said the blind Mr. Clayton. "You see I am thinking of going back on the stage again, doing a funny piano act. I can play pretty well, even if I am blind," he said, turning toward Mr. Brown, for he seemed to know just where the children's father sat. "And as I don't like to sit around doing nothing I've decided to go back on the stage again." "We're going on the stage!" cried Bunny, who, with Sue, had been waiting for a chance to get in a word or two. "We're going to have a real play on a farm," said Sue. "And you ought to see our dog Splash hang on to Mr. Treadwell." "Treadwell? Is that the impersonator?" asked Mr. Clayton. "Yes," answered Mart. "He is helping us with the little play." "And maybe you could be in it and play the piano!" cried Bunny. "We heard you play the piano terrible nice!" "Well, I'm glad you liked it," said Mr. Clayton, with a laugh, "but I'm afraid I'm not quite ready to start a performance yet. I need more practice. Oh, but I am glad you have found me, and that I have found you!" "Mr. Clayton only came to this Home a few days ago," explained Mr. Harrison to Mr. Brown. "I had forgotten that you had asked about some one of his name, or I would have sent you word before that the children's blind uncle was here." "And if I had known they were so near me, and had been looking so long for me, I'd have sent them word," said Uncle Bill. "And now tell me all that happened, Mart and Lucile." Their story was soon told, just as I have written it here--how they were "stranded" when the show broke up, and how Mr. Brown took care of them. The story of Mr. Treadwell was also told to Mart and Lucile's Uncle Bill, and how the impersonator had written the little play. "And once he lost his wig and Wango the monkey had it!" cried Sue. "Indeed! Wango must be a funny monkey!" said Mr. Clayton. "He's funny, and so's Miss Winkler," said Bunny. They all laughed at this, and then Mr. Clayton told his story. He had been an actor as were many of his relatives, including Mart and Lucile. He had been stricken blind some years before, and had been in many Homes and hospitals, trying to get cured. But at last he had given up hope, and settled down to make the best of life. He often wrote to Lucile and Mart, and also to their Uncle Simon and Aunt Sallie. But of late he had lost the address of the boy and girl actor, and they had also lost his. They all traveled around so much that one did not know where the other was, except that Lucile and her brother always stayed together, of course. "But where is Aunt Sallie?" asked Mart. Mr. Clayton said that she and her husband were many miles away, in a far country, traveling about and acting. But he knew their address, and he would at once send them word that Lucile and Mart wanted to hear from them. Mr. Clayton had not heard from the Weatherbys for several months, he remarked. "Very likely they've been trying as hard to find you as you have to find them," said Mr. Clayton. "They'll be glad to know that I have found you." "And we're glad we've found you!" cried Lucile, as she kissed her blind uncle again. "Oh, it's so good to have folks!" "We would be glad to have you come over to our house and stay with us," said Mr. Brown to the blind man. "Thank you," he answered, "but I must stay here and finish learning to play the piano for the act I am to do. Of course I'll come over and see Lucile and Mart, though. I call it 'seeing' them, but of course I can't use my eyes," he added. "However, I've grown used to that, and I don't seem to mind being in the dark." "You can't ever see anybody make faces at you--if they ever do--can you?" asked Sue, as she patted his hand. "No indeed!" laughed Mr. Clayton. "I never thought of that. But I suppose some bad people like to make faces at me, and, as you say, if ever they do I sha'n't see them." "I don't guess anybody would make faces at you when you play on the piano," said Bunny Brown. "I don't guess so, either," added Sue. There was more talk, and then it was time for Mr. Brown and the children to go back home. Mr. Clayton promised to write a telegram to Lucile's other uncle and aunt. He could write even though he was blind, and Mr. Harrison, at the Home for the Blind, promised to send the message. "Then you'll hear from Uncle Simon and Aunt Sallie soon," said the blind man. "I hope we hear before the play!" exclaimed Lucile. "It will make me so much happier when I sing." "Perhaps you'll come over to the hall the night or the performance," suggested Mr. Brown to Mr. Clayton. "You can hear what goes on." "I'll try to come," agreed the blind man. Very happy, now that they had found their uncle, Mart and Lucile went home with Mr. Brown, Bunny, and Sue, promising to come often again to see Mr. Clayton. "Wasn't it queer," said Mart, "that, after all, he should come to the same Home we're going to help with the farm play?" "Very strange, indeed," said Mr. Brown. "And now, if we can only get word from Uncle Simon and Aunt Sallie, how happy we'll be!" exclaimed Lucile. "Oh, I'm sure you'll hear soon, my dear," said Mrs. Brown when they had reached home and told her the good news. Then followed a time of anxious waiting, with Lucile and Mart looking almost every hour for a message from their uncle and aunt so far away. And they and the other children were kept busy getting ready for the play. For it was almost Christmas and time for the great performance. The tickets had been printed, and all the mistakes corrected in the type that Charlie Star had set up. Many tickets had been sold, and it looked as though everything would be all right. "I do hope we won't make any mistakes," said Bunny to his sister one day, as they were talking about the coming play. "I hope so, too," she answered. "Wouldn't it be terrible if we got on the stage and forgot what we were going to say?" "Yes, it would," agreed Bunny. "I'm going to keep on saying my lines over and over again all the while. Then I won't forget." "Don't be too anxious, my dears," said Mrs. Brown, as she heard the children talking this way. "Sometimes the more you try to remember things like that, the more easily you forget. Just do your best, put your whole mind on it, and I'm sure you will remember the right words to say, and the right actions to do." "It's easier to remember what to do than what to say," declared Bunny. "Mr. Treadwell tells us to act just as we would if we weren't on the stage, but of course we can't say anything we happen to think of--we have to say the right words." "I remember once, when I was a little girl," remarked Mrs. Brown, as she threaded her needle, for she was mending one of Sue's dresses, "I had to speak a piece in school, and I didn't know it at all well." "Oh, tell us about it, Mother!" begged Sue. "Please do!" cried Bunny Brown. For there was a funny little smile on his mother's face, and whenever the children saw that they knew there was a story back of it. "Well, it was this way," went on Mrs. Brown. "When I was a little girl I lived in the country, and I went to school in a little red brick schoolhouse about half a mile down the road from our house. We had a very nice teacher, and one day she said we must all learn a piece to speak for the next Friday afternoon. "Well, of course we children were all excited. Some of us had spoken pieces before, and some of us had not. And I was one that never had, but I was pleased to think I should get up in front of the whole school and speak a piece. "When I went home that night I asked my mother what I should learn as my recitation. She got down a book that she had used when she was a little school girl, and in it were a number of nice pieces. There was one about Mary and her little lamb, but I thought that was too young for me to take, so I picked out one about a ship being wrecked at sea. There were about ten verses to the piece, and they told how a great storm came up and drove the vessel on the rocks." "I'd like to see a big storm!" exclaimed Bunny. "Please keep quiet!" begged Sue. "Mother can't tell about her speaking in school if you're going to talk all the while." "I won't talk any more," promised Bunny Brown. "Please go on, Mother. I'll be quiet." So Mrs. Brown continued: "I began to learn this piece about the wreck. I don't remember now, how it all went, but I know the first two lines were like this:
"I forget the different pieces that were spoken. There were all kinds, but none like mine. Some were sad and some were funny, and some of the boys and girls got up and were so stage-struck that they couldn't think of a single word of the pieces they had learned. "Then I was afraid this would happen to me, but when my name was called, and I walked up to the platform, I was glad to find that I could remember every single word--or at least I thought I could. "But dear me! As soon as I opened my mouth and began to speak it was just as though the bottom had opened and let everything fall out of everything. All I could think of was the first two lines:
"So I braced my feet on the platform, and then I stood straight up in front of the whole school and fairly shouted out this verse:
"What did the teacher say?" asked Bunny. "At the time I thought she was rather angry," answered his mother, "thinking I had done it on purpose, to make fun of the speaking. But really I had not. The wrong two lines popped into my head all of a sudden. And of course; they spoiled the piece. I know now, too, that she was trying to keep from laughing, and that made her look stern." "I hope that doesn't happen to us," said Sue, as she and Bunny thought over the little story their mother had told them. "I hope not, either," agreed her brother. "Come on--let's go up in the attic and practice." So they did, and for some time they went over the lines they were to speak on the stage. After a while Lucile and Mart came in and helped Bunny and Sue. The older boy and girl said the two little ones were doing very well. Mr. Treadwell, too, who heard Bunny and Sue go through their parts, said they did very well. "We'll have a good practice to-morrow," said the impersonator. Then Mr. Treadwell called a dress rehearsal. That is generally the last one before the show, and it is really a complete performance in itself, though the audience isn't allowed to come in. The day before Christmas Bunny, Sue, Lucile, Mart, and the other girls and boys assembled in the hall over the hardware store for the dress rehearsal. Mr. Treadwell was there, and the men who were to help set up the scenery were on hand. Just before it was time for the rehearsal to begin George Watson went up to Mr. Treadwell. "If you please," said he, "couldn't Peter be in the play?" "Peter? Who is Peter?" asked the impersonator. "I'm afraid it's too late to put any one else in, George. They wouldn't have time to practice, and, besides, we really have all the actors we need." "Oh, Peter wouldn't need any practice," said George. "He'd be just fine in the barnyard scene. I brought him with me!" "Well, I'm sorry, for I'm afraid I'll have to disappoint your friend Peter," said Mr. Treadwell. "But where is he?" "Here in this basket," answered George, and he held up a small one in front of the stage manager. _ |
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