The Middle Moffat by Eleanor Estes Page B

Miss Chichester to Jane. "Perhaps people will not notice."
    If I can only see where the background is,
thought Jane. For she found it even harder to keep her eyes close to the holes cut in her costume than it had been to the real ones in her regular bear head.
    Now the heavy curtain rolled up. It didn't stick halfway up as it sometimes did, and Sylvie, Goldilocks, in a blue pinafore and socks, ran out onto the stage amid loud applause. The play had begun! Sylvie had a great deal of acting to do all by herself before the three bears came home. But she wasn't scared. She was used to being on the stage alone.
    Jane's heart pounded as she and Joey and Rufus waited for their cue to come home. If only she didn't trip and turn a somersault, for she really could not see very well. Somehow she managed to see out of only one eye at a time. These eyeholes must have been cut crooked. One hole kept getting hooked on her nose.
    "Now!" Miss Chichester whispered. "Cue! Out with you three bears."
    Joe, Jane, and Rufus, the three bears, lumbered out onto the stage. They were never supposed to just walk, always lumber and lope.
    The applause was tremendous. It startled the three bears. The Town Hall was packed. Somebody must have sold a lot of tickets.
    "There's Mama," said Rufus. He said it out loud.
    He wasn't supposed to say anything out loud except about his porridge, his chair, and his bed. But anyway he said, "There's Mama." Jane could not see Mama. Lumbering out onto the stage had dislocated her costume so that now she could not see at all. Fortunately the footlights shone through the brown flannel of her costume so she could keep away from the edge of the stage and not fall off.
    The Moffats all knew their lines so well they did not forget them once. The only trouble was they did not have much chance to say them because the applause was so

    great every time they opened their mouths. At last, however, they reached the act about the three beds. An extra platform had been set up on the stage to look like the upstairs of a three bears' house. The three bears lumbered slowly up the steps.
    Suddenly shouts arose all over the Hall:
    "Her head! Her head! The middle bear's head!"
    "Sh-sh-sh," said others. "See what's going to happen."
    As Jane could not see very well she had no idea what these shouts referred to. She had the same head on now that she had had on all during this play so far. Why then all these shouts? Or had she really stayed in the background the way Miss Chichester had asked her to, and the audience had only just discovered about the makeshift?
    "Oh," whispered Joey to Jane. "I see it. It's your real bear head and it's on the top of my bedpost."
    "O-o-o-h!" said Jane. "Get it down."
    "How can I?" said Joe. "With all these people watching me?"
    "Try and get it when you punch your bed," urged Jane.
    Joey was examining his big bear's bed now. "Hm-m-m," he said fiercely. "Somebody has been lying on my bed..." But he couldn't reach the middle bear's head. He did try. But he couldn't quite reach it, and there was more laughter from the audience.
    Jane pulled her costume about until she could see through the eyehole. Ah, there was her head! On the post of the big bear's bed. No wonder people were laughing. What a place for the middle bear's head. Here she was, without it. And there it was, without her. Jane resolved to get it. Somehow or other she would rescue her head before this play was completely over. Now was her chance. It was her turn to talk about her bed. Instead, Jane said:
    "Somebody has been trying on my head, and there it is!"
    Jane hopped up on Joey's bed. She grabbed her middle bear head.
    "Yes," she repeated. "Somebody has been trying on my head," but as she added, "and here it is!" the safety pins that held her makeshift head together popped open. The audience burst into roars of laughter as Janey's own real head emerged. Only for a second though. For she clapped her middle bear head right on as fast as she could, and