w the things, Jack; they're cut up with a scroll-saw into all
sorts of wiggly pieces, and Florida insists on getting next to New
Hampshire and Illinois won't fit anywhere except between South Carolina
and Georgia."

"There must be a piece of this missing," answered Jack. "I'm going to
have another look."

And presently he came back staggering under what looked like a length of
board walk.

"Funny you fellows couldn't find this," he said disgustedly as he swung
one end around against the wall and brought down six pairs of
dumb-bells. "It was right in plain sight; they were using it for a
carpenter's bench."

"It _is_ funny," growled Warren. "Wonder they didn't make an ice-chest
or a sewing-machine out of it!"

After that it was plain sailing until they came to the curtain. It was a
beautiful thing, that curtain, fourteen feet wide and twelve feet long
and bearing a picture of Niagara Falls in blue, green, purple and pink
surrounded by a wreath of crimson cabbages--only they were supposed to
be roses. Despite its beauty, work up and down it would not. Half way up
it began to range itself in artistic folds, apparently forgetting all
about the wooden roller at the bottom. Once it came down unexpectedly on
Chub's head, and Chub danced around and shook his fist at it and
declared that he'd cut holes in it for two cents. No one offered to put
up the two cents and so the curtain was saved. In the end Jack
manufactured a new pulley-block and after that the foolish thing worked
charmingly every other time.

"All we'll have to do," said Warren disgustedly, "will be to make
believe pull it up before we really mean to."

"Kind of disconcerting to the fellows on the stage," commented Jack,
"but I guess that's what we'll have to do."

The drop curtain, showing a lovely sylvan glade in unwholesome shades of
green, went up without trouble at the back of the stage, but the pieces
at the sides, very frayed trees with impossible foliage, refused to
stand up.

"We'll have to make props," said Chub. "I don't blame the old things for
wanting to lie down; it makes me tired just to look at them."

But when, finally, the stage was set and the boys stood off at a
respectful distance and examined it it really looked very well. Chub
admired the effect of distance and wondered where the path led to.
Warren said he'd like to meet the man who had chiseled out the statue
under the trees and another fellow wanted to go bird-egging. Then the