"No," laughed Mart. "Though if you aren't careful that may happen. But when I say you'll make a 'hit' I mean that the audience will like the tricks you do and they'll clap."

"Like they did in the circus?" asked Bunny.

"Just like that," said Mart.

Bunny sat and watched his friend. It looked so easy when Mart swung to and fro on the rope, twisting and turning this way and that.

"I could do it," said Bunny to himself.

When Mart was called to the house by his sister he forgot to take down the ropes and straps that made the trapeze in the barn. They hung right before Bunny Brown's eyes.

"I believe I can do it!" said Bunny to himself, as he looked at the swinging trapeze. "Anyhow, if I do fall, there's some soft hay."

And then Bunny did what he should not have done. He pulled some boxes and rolled a barrel over to the middle of the barn floor until he had a sort of platform under the trapeze Mart had put up to practice on. Then Bunny climbed up, got hold of the swinging bar and swung his legs over.

Then something queer happened, for the first thing Bunny Brown knew, there he was, hanging upside down with his legs over the trapeze and his head pointing to the pile of hay in the middle of the barn floor.

CHAPTER XVII

SUE'S QUEER SLIDE

Bunny Brown was at first so frightened, when he found himself swinging upside downside from Mart's trapeze, that he did not know what to do. He was too frightened even to call out, as he nearly always did when he found himself in trouble. Nearly always his first thought was of his father or mother. But this time he hardly knew what to do.

It had all happened so suddenly. He had not meant to get upside downside this way. All he wanted to do was to sit on the trapeze, as he had often sat in a swing, and sway to and fro. But something had gone wrong, something had slipped, and there Bunny was, hanging by his knees with his head toward the floor.

Then Bunny had a thought that he might let go with his clinging legs and drop to the pile of hay. That was what the hay was for--to fall on. It was a thick, soft pile, but, somehow or other, Bunny did not like to think of falling on it head first.

"If I could only land on it with my hands or feet it wouldn't be so bad," thought the little fellow to himself. "But if I hit on my head----"

And when he thought of that he clung with all his force to the wooden bar. He was still swinging to and fro, and on this first swing Bunny had knocked to one side the pile of boxes and the barrel with which he had made himself a sort of ladder so he could reach Mart's trapeze, which was several feet above the barn floor. So, now that the boxes by which he had climbed up were out of reach, Bunny could not get down by using them.

And he wanted, very much, to get down. He tried to wiggle around in such a way that he could reach the wooden bar with his hands, but he could not, and the more he wiggled the more it felt as though he might fall.

Then Bunny decided that he must call for help. He had hoped that Mart might come back, but the acrobatic boy was in the house helping his sister learn a new song Lucile was going to sing in the play. So Mart knew nothing of what was happening to Bunny.

"Mother! Daddy! Come and get me!" cried Bunny as he swung to and fro on the trapeze, head downward. "Come and get me! Mother! Daddy!"

Bunny might have called like this for some time, and neither his father nor his mother would have heard him. For Mr. Brown was down at his office on the dock, and Mrs. Brown was making a cake, beating up eggs with the egg beater.

An egg beater, you know, makes a lot of noise, and even if Bunny had been in the kitchen Mrs. Brown might not have heard him call out. And away out in the barn as he was, of course she couldn't hear him. I don't believe she could have heard him even if she hadn't been using the egg beater.

So poor little Bunny Brown swung by his legs on the trapeze in the upper part of the garage and he did not know how to get down nor how to stop himself.

"Daddy! Mother!" he called again, but no one heard him.

On a summer day, when the windows were open, Bunny's voice might have been heard from the barn to the house, but now no one heard him.

But, as it also happened, Sue was the means by which Bunny's trouble was discovered, though Sue, too, had an accident. Soon after Mart came to the house to help his sister, Sue heard the doorbell ring, and when she went to see who was there she saw Helen Newton, one of her little playmates who was to act in the show with Sue.

"Oh, Sue!" exclaimed Helen, "have you got a doll you could lend me? I have to have one in the play, and the only one I had isn't any good any more."

"Is your doll sick?" Sue wanted to know.

"She's worse than sick," said Helen. "Our puppy dog got hold of her the other day, and he dragged my doll all around the kitchen and all her clothes were torn off and she's chewed and she isn't fit to be seen. I can't have her in the play with me, though I did at first, before the puppy chewed her."

"I guess Sue can let you take one of her dolls," said Mrs. Brown, with a smile, as she came in from the kitchen where she had been doing her baking. "What one do you think would be best for Helen, Sue?"

"Oh, I guess my unbreakable doll, Jane Anna, would be best for in the play," Sue answered. "If you drop her, Helen, it won't hurt."

"No, and it won't hurt much if our puppy dog gets hold of her," added Helen. "Course our dog won't come to the play and chew up any dolls, but he might get hold of one again when I'm practicing at home. I think the Jane Anna will be best."

"I'll get her for you," offered Sue. But when she went to look for the doll for Helen, Jane Anna could not be found.

"I wonder where it is!" exclaimed Sue.

"Maybe your dog Splash chewed her up," said Helen.

"No, he doesn't chew dolls," replied Sue. "He chews up my school books, and Bunny's, but he doesn't chew dolls."

"I wish my dog would chew books," went on Helen. "Then I wouldn't have to study. Maybe he will chew them after he finds there isn't any of my old doll left to bite."

Sue looked in different places in the house for her unbreakable doll, but could not find it. She asked Lucile and Mart about it, when the brother and sister took a rest from the song which Lucile was to sing, though her brother had a part in it.

"Lost your doll, have you, Sue?" asked Mart. "Well, maybe she is hiding under the umbrella plant!"

"Oh, you're teasing me!" said Sue, and that's just what Mart was doing.

For though Mrs. Brown did have an umbrella plant, and a rubber plant also, Sue's doll was not under either one.

"The last time I saw you have your unbreakable doll was out in the hayloft of the barn," said Lucile. "Don't you remember? You were playing house with Sadie West."

"O, now I remember!" cried Sue. "I left Jane Anna asleep in the hay in the corner of the loft. I'll go out and get her for you, Helen. You wait here."

So Helen sat down in a chair in the dining room while Sue ran out to the barn to look for her doll. Mart and Lucile began practicing the song again.

Now all this while Bunny Brown was swinging by his legs, upside downside on the trapeze. It seems to him a long while since he had started to hang head downward, but, really, it was not very long. For though it takes me quite a little while to tell you about it, really it all happened in a short while.

So Bunny Brown had not been swinging very long, head downward, before Sue ran out to the barn, or garage, whichever you like to call it, to look for her doll. Up the stairs into the loft, where Mart had fastened the trapeze, went Sue. She had just reached the top step and was wondering if her doll were really there when, all at once, Sue heard some one cry:

"Help me down! Help me down!"

"Oh, my!" was the little girl's first thought, "can that by my doll?"

Then she knew it couldn't be. For, though some dolls have inside them a little phonograph that can say words, Sue's Jane Anna had nothing like this.

"But somebody yelled!" said Sue to herself.