That was certainly a day of troubles. Luckily there were few recitations for anyone. Jack and Chub spent most of the morning directing and aiding in the erection of the stage at the end of the gymnasium. The stage was a sectional affair which, when not in use, was stored in the furnace room. Unfortunately one section seemed to be missing, and putting the thing together was, as Chub said, like joining one of those geographical puzzles. "You know 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."