"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
spe