"What have you got there?" asked Mr. Raymond, the hardware man, as he saw Bunny with the basket.
The little boy told.
"Yes, put him down in the cellar," said Mr. Raymond. "That ought to keep him quiet. I'll turn on the electric lights down there for you, so you can see. Otherwise you might tumble downstairs in the dark."
Bunny had been down in the hardware store cellar before, once when his father was looking at a certain piece of iron for a boat, the iron being stowed away down in the basement, and at other times, when he himself wanted to buy some odds or ends from the hardware man to make some toy. So Bunny knew his way down into the cellar.
"I'll come and get you after the play," said Bunny to Peter, as he set the basket, with the rooster in it, on a big box.
Peter didn't answer. He didn't even crow. I guess he didn't like the dark. He might have thought it was night, when the electric lights were turned out after Bunny had gone upstairs, and Peter may have gone to roost.
Bunny tramped upstairs and went on with his parts in the play. Everything went along nicely, and every one said the last act, the one in the orchard, was fine. Bunny and Sue did well, as did Lucile, Mart and the others.
"I wish we could think of some way so my rooster would only crow at the right time," said George, when talking to Bunny, after the rehearsal was over.
Bunny Brown wished so, too, for he wanted the little play to be as real as it could, so the people who saw it would be glad they had come to pay money to help the Home for the Blind.
Mr. Clayton sent word from the Home that he would surely be on hand at the performance Christmas afternoon. He also said he had not yet received any word from the other uncle and aunt of the two vaudeville children.