Bunny looked at Sue and Sue looked at Bunny. The other children in the play also looked at one another. They were sure none of them had spoken, and yet Mr. Treadwell seemed to think the voice had been one of theirs.
"Oh, here comes a tramp!" cried Sue once more, and Bunny was just about to repeat his part, when, again, came the strange, shrill voice, saying:
"No tramps allowed! No tramps wanted! Give him a cold potato and let him go!"
"Oh, I'm not going to stay here!" suddenly cried Sadie West.
"There is something funny here," said Bunny Brown. "None of us is talking and yet we hear a voice."
Mr. Treadwell, who had been looking over the papers on which he had written down the different parts of the play, looked up quickly when he again heard the strange voice. He was just about to ask who had called out when something fluttered down out of the stage tree which was to be set up in the orchard scene. The tree was off to one side, in what are called in theater talk, the "wings." Out of the tree fluttered something with flapping wings.
"It's a big owl!" cried George Watson.
"Don't let it get hold of your hair or it'll pull it all out!" called Sue. "Owls feets gets tangled in your hair," and she put her hands over her head.
"Pooh! They don't either!" cried Helen Newton.
The children were rushing here and there about the stage, and Mr. Treadwell was trying to see where the strange bird was going to light, when Bunny Brown cried out: