"Hold that pose!" repeated the man, commandingly.
But it was not the children who moved. There was the creaking sound of parting timbers. Somebody from the back shouted a warning—but too late.
"Down! All of you down to the stage!"
Those on the lower steps of the scaffolding jumped. The stage hands ran in to catch the others; but the higher little girls could not leap without risking both life and limb!
A pandemonium of warning cries and shrieks of alarm followed. The scaffolding pulled apart slowly, falling forward through the drop which retarded it at first, but finally tearing the drop from its fastenings in the flies.
Swiftwing, the hummingbird, did not add her little voice to the general uproar. She was safely held by the wire cable hooked to her belt at the back.
But the butterflies were helpless. The men who tried to seize them from the rear could not do so at first because the scaffolding structure fell out upon the stage.
The Corner House girl, frightened as she was, miraculously preserved her presence of mind. As she had already done before during the rehearsals, she seized the sashes of her two smaller schoolmates at the first alarm. Their feet slipped from the foothold, but Tess held them.
