"I guess we can if Mr. Treadwell will write parts for them," answered Mart. "But the trouble is, you can't be sure that Wango and the parrot will do the things you want them to. The parrot might speak at the wrong time, and Wango might cut up by chasing his tail or hanging by his hind paws from the ceiling, and so make the audience laugh when we didn't want them to."
"That's so," agreed Bunny. "Then I guess we'll only just have our dog Splash in the play. He'll do whatever you tell him."
"He certainly chases after the tramp in a funny way," laughed Lucile. "I should think Mr. Treadwell would be afraid the dog would tear his coat."
"Oh, Splash only bites the old piece of cloth," said Mart. "It's a good trick."
A little while after this Bunny saw Mart going out to the garage with some ropes and straps under his arm. The garage was partly a barn, for the Shetland pony was kept in it and some hay for Toby, the pony, to eat was also stored in the same place.
"What are you going to do?" Bunny asked the boy acrobat.
"Practice a few of my new tricks that I'm going to do in the play," Mart answered. "There's a new kind of back somersault I want to turn, and a new kind of flipflop I want to make. You know in the play I do some tricks in front of the stage barn to make the farmers laugh. I'm supposed to be a boy who has run away from a circus."
"We knew a boy who really ran away from a circus once," said Bunny. "And he was in our show when we had one down at grandpa's farm."
"Well, I'm going to do a few circus tricks, as well as I can, though I never was in a tent show," said Mart.
"Please, may I come and watch you?" asked Bunny.