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[Illustration: She truly did well in this performance. (Page 252)
_Frontispiece_]




    THE
    CORNER HOUSE GIRLS
    IN A PLAY

    HOW THEY REHEARSED
    HOW THEY ACTED
    AND WHAT THE PLAY BROUGHT IN

    BY
    GRACE BROOKS HILL
    AUTHOR OF "THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS," "THE CORNER
    HOUSE GIRLS AT SCHOOL," ETC.

    _ILLUSTRATED BY
    R. EMMETT OWEN_

    NEW YORK
    BARSE & HOPKINS
    PUBLISHERS




    BOOKS FOR GIRLS

    The Corner House Girls Series
    By Grace Brooks Hill

    _12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Price per volume,
    75 cents, postpaid._

    THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS
    THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS AT SCHOOL
    THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS UNDER CANVAS
    THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS IN A PLAY
    THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS' ODD FIND
    THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS ON A TOUR

    (_Other volumes in preparation_)

    BARSE & HOPKINS

    PUBLISHERS      NEW YORK

    Copyright, 1916,
    by
    Barse & Hopkins

    _The Corner House Girls in a Play_

    VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY
    BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK




CONTENTS


    CHAPTER                                                 PAGE

        I THE SOVEREIGNS OF ENGLAND                            9

       II THE LADY IN THE GRAY CLOAK                          18

      III BILLY BUMPS' BANQUET                                27

       IV THE BASKET BALL TEAM IN TROUBLE                     42

        V THE STONE IN THE POOL                               57

       VI JUST OUT OF REACH                                   66

      VII THE CORE OF THE APPLE                               75

     VIII LYCURGUS BILLET'S EAGLE BAIT                        84

       IX BOB BUCKHAM TAKES A HAND                           101

        X SOMETHING ABOUT OLD TIMES                          112

       XI THE STRAWBERRY MARK                                122

      XII TEA WITH MRS. ELAND                                134

     XIII NEALE SUFFERS A SHORTENING PROCESS                 145

      XIV THE FIRST REHEARSAL                                156

       XV THE HALLOWE'EN PARTY                               167

      XVI THE FIVE-DOLLAR GOLD PIECE                         175

     XVII THE MYSTERIOUS LETTER                              184

    XVIII MISS PEPPERILL AND THE GRAY LADY                   193

      XIX A THANKSGIVING SKATING PARTY                       198

       XX NEALE'S ENDLESS CHAIN                              206

      XXI THE CORNER HOUSE THANKSGIVING                      212

     XXII CLOUDS AND SUNSHINE                                217

    XXIII SWIFTWING, THE HUMMINGBIRD                         228

     XXIV THE FINAL REHEARSAL                                240

      XXV A GREAT SUCCESS                                    247




ILLUSTRATIONS


                                                            PAGE

    She truly did well in this performance        _Frontispiece_

    At the moment the eagle dropped with spread talons,
    the big dog leaped                                       103

    They saw two huge pumpkin lanterns grinning a
    welcome from the gateposts                               173

    The scaffolding pulled apart slowly, falling forward
    through the drop                                         238




THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS IN A PLAY

CHAPTER I

THE SOVEREIGNS OF ENGLAND


"I never can learn them in the wide, wide world! I just know I never
can, Dot!"

"Dear me! I'm dreadfully sorry for you, Tess," responded Dorothy
Kenway--only nobody ever called her by her full name, for she really was
too small to achieve the dignity of anything longer than "Dot."

"I'm dreadfully sorry for you, Tess," she repeated, hugging the
Alice-doll a little closer and wrapping the lace "throw" carefully about
the shoulders of her favorite child. The Alice-doll had never enjoyed
robust health since her awful experience of more than a year before,
when she had been buried alive.

Of course, Dot had not got as far in school as the sovereigns of
England. She had not as yet heard very much about the history of her own
country. She knew, of course, that Columbus discovered it, the Pilgrims
settled it, that George Washington was the father of it, and Abraham
Lincoln saved it.

Tess Kenway was usually very quick in her books, and she was now
prepared to enter a class in the lower grammar grade of the Milton
school in which she would have easy lessons in English history. She had
just purchased the history on High Street, for school would open for the
autumn term in a few days.

Mr. Englehart, one of the School Board and an influential citizen of
Milton, had a penchant for beginning at the beginning of things. As he
put it: "How can our children be grounded well in the history of our own
country if they are not informed upon the salient points of English
history--the Mother Country, from whom we obtained our first laws, and
from whom came our early leaders?"

As the two youngest Kenway girls came out of the stationery and book
store, Miss Pepperill was entering. Tess and Dot had met Miss Pepperill
at church the Sunday previous, and Tess knew that the rather
sharp-featured, bespectacled lady was to be her new teacher.

The girls whom Tess knew, who had already had experience with Miss
Pepperill called her "Pepperpot." She was supposed to be very irritable,
and she _did_ have red hair. She shot questions out at one in a most
disconcerting way, and Dot was quite amazed and startled by the way Miss
Pepperill pounced on Tess.

"Let's see your book, child," Miss Pepperill said, seizing Tess' recent
purchase. "Ah--yes. So you are to be in my room, are you?"

"Yes, ma'am," admitted Tess, timidly.

"Ah--yes! What is the succession of the sovereigns of England? Name
them!"

Now, if Miss Pepperill had demanded that Tess Kenway name the Pleiades,
the latter would have been no more startled--or no less able to reply
intelligently.

"Ah--yes!" snapped Miss Pepperill, seeing Tess' vacuous expression. "I
shall ask you that the first day you are in my room. Be prepared to
answer it. The succession of the sovereigns of England," and she swept
on into the store, leaving the children on the sidewalk, wonderfully
impressed.

They had walked over into the Parade Ground, and seated themselves on
one of the park benches in sight of the old Corner House, as Milton
people had called the Stower homestead, on the corner of Willow Street,
from time immemorial. Tess' hopeless announcement followed their sitting
on the bench for at least half an hour.

"Why, I can't never!" she sighed, making it positive by at least two
negatives. "I never had an idea England had such an awful long string of
kings. It's worse than the list of Presidents of the United States."

"Is it?" Dot observed, curiously. "It must be awful annoyable to have to
learn 'em."

"Goodness, Dot! There you go again with one of your big words,"
exclaimed Tess, in vexation. "Who ever heard of 'annoyable' before? You
must have invented that."

Dot calmly ignored the criticism. It must be confessed that she loved
the sound of long words, and sometimes, as Agnes said, "made an awful
mess of polysyllables." Agnes was the Kenway next older than Tess, while
Ruth was seventeen, the oldest of all, and had for more than three years
been the house-mother of the Kenway family.

Ruth and Agnes were at home in the old Corner House at this very hour.
There lived in the big dwelling, with the four Corner House Girls, Aunt
Sarah Maltby (who really was no relative of the girls, but a partial
charge upon their charity), Mrs. MacCall, their housekeeper, and old
Uncle Rufus, Uncle Peter Stower's black butler and general factotum, who
had been left to the care of the old man's heirs when he died.

The first volume of this series, called "The Corner House Girls," told
the story of the coming of the four sisters and Aunt Sarah Maltby to the
Stower homestead, and of their first adventures in Milton--getting
settled in their new home and making friends among their neighbors.

In "The Corner House Girls at School," the second volume, the four
Kenway sisters extended the field of their acquaintance in Milton and
thereabout, entered the local schools in the several grades to which
they were assigned, made more friends and found some few rivals. They
began to feel, too, that responsibility which comes with improved
fortunes, for Uncle Peter Stower had left a considerable estate to the
four girls, of which Mr. Howbridge, the lawyer, was administrator as
well as the girls' guardian.

Now the second summer of their sojourn at the old Corner House was just
ending, and the girls had but recently returned from a most delightful
outing at Pleasant Cove, on the Atlantic Coast, some distance away from
Milton, which was an inland town.

All the fun and adventure of that vacation are related in "The Corner
House Girls Under Canvas," the third volume of the series, and the one
immediately preceding the present story.

Tess was seldom vindictive; but after she had puzzled her poor brain for
this half hour, trying to pick out and to get straight the Williams and
Stephens and Henrys and Johns and Edwards and Richards, to say nothing
of the Georges, who had reigned over England, she was quite flushed and
excited.

"I know I'm just going to de-_test_ that Miss Pepperpot!" she exclaimed.
"I--I could throw this old history at her--I just could!"

"But you couldn't hit her, Tess," Dot observed placidly. "You know you
couldn't."

"Why not?"

"Because you can't throw anything straight--no straighter than Sammy
Pinkney's ma. I heard her scolding Sammy the other day for throwing
stones. She says, 'Sammy, don't you let me catch you throwing any more
stones.'"

"And did he mind her?" asked Tess.

"I don't know," Dot replied reflectively. "But he says to her: 'What'll
I do if the other fellers throw 'em at me?' 'Just you come and tell me,
Sammy, if they do,' says Mrs. Pinkney."

"Well?" queried Tess, as her sister seemed inclined