Farmer Green'sapple trees looked green and flourishing. Thanks to Mrs. Ladybug—and some of her relations—there was scarcely an insect left on the leaves. And since there was no more work to be done in the orchard just then, and nothing for her to eat, Mrs. Ladybug settled among the raspberry bushes near the duck pond. She said that they needed her attention.
One day she paused in her labors, feeling that she had earned a few minutes' rest. And she dropped out of the bushes and strayed close to the water's edge.
A light breeze ruffled the surface of the duck pond into tiny waves.
"What a terrible, rough sea there is to-day!" Mrs. Ladybug murmured as she gazed upon the troubled water. "Perhaps, if I cling to a tall grass stalk, I can get a better view of it."
She soon found a stalk that grew high above all the rest. Crawling to the very top of it Mrs. Ladybug was able to look far out over the face of the pond.
"Goodness!" she said to herself. "I'm glad I'm not out there in a ship."
A few moments later she happened to glance down near the shore. And there, to her horror, she beheld a frog.
He was not a big frog. On the contrary, he was the tiniest frog that Mrs. Ladybug had ever seen. He was sitting on a lily pad, singing with a small, shrill voice, which sounded exactly as if youwere tapping two marbles together.
Now, Mrs. Ladybug had all her life stood in great fear of frogs. She didn't dare move, as she gazed at this one with eyes that popped almost out of her head.
He was a brownish person, with a yellow throat which he puffed out like a bag as he sang. And his skin was so rough that Mrs. Ladybug shuddered as she looked at it. Her own was very, very smooth.
All at once the frog looked up and spied Mrs. Ladybug staring at him.
She would have shrieked—had she been able to.
Then Mrs. Ladybug did the thing that she always did whenever she had a great fright. She played dead. She pulled her feet under her body, out of sight, and stuck, motionless, to the grass stalk.
Nothing happened. And she wasabout to take another sly look at the frog when something moved the stalk of grass. It was only the wind. But Mrs. Ladybug didn't know that. She was sure that the frog had touched it.
Then Mrs. Ladybug played her next trick. She let go of the stalk and dropped to the ground, where she lay upon her side as if she would never move again.
Once more she kept quite still. And since nobody disturbed her, after a time she opened her eyes.
She found herself looking straight into those of the tiny frog, who still sat upon his lily pad in the duck pond.
Mrs. Ladybug shut her eyes instantly. She only hoped that the frog hadn't noticed her action.
Mrs. Ladybugdidn't know that the frog she saw was a very timid fellow. His name was Mr. Cricket Frog. He liked to sit on a lily pad and sing. And his singing sounded a good deal like the music that Chirpy Cricket made. In fact, that was the reason for his odd name.
Mr. Cricket Frog had a trick not unlike the one that Mrs. Ladybug herself played upon him. Whenever a fish, or any other enemy, came near him, if he hadn't time to hide in the mud at the bottom of the pond Mr. Cricket Frog played dead. He would float in the water as if lifeless, until hisenemy had gone off about his business.
He was so timid—this Mr. Cricket Frog—that when he saw a stranger he would sometimes play dead. And that was exactly what happened when he caught sight of Mrs. Ladybug as she clung to the grass stalk near the edge of the duck pond and stared at him.
Of course Mrs. Ladybug didn't know all this. When she shut her eyes, and pulled her feet under her body, she wasn't aware that Mr. Cricket Frog was just as alarmed as she was. Having closed her eyes, she couldn't see him jump into the water and float. She couldn't see him climb out upon the lily pad again and gaze at her.
Now, the moment Mrs. Ladybug looked at the frog the second time he took fright anew. Once more he sprang from his seat. Once more he floated like a chip upon the surface of the pond. Once morehe crawled back to his seat, after he had made up his mind that the danger had passed.
So they played dead for a long time—both Mrs. Ladybug and Mr. Cricket Frog. And if he hadn't at last made up his mind that she was afraid of him, they might still be trying to fool each other.
"Pardon me, madam!" Mr. Cricket Frog called to Mrs. Ladybug. "I see you're a bit timid. I assure you I shall not harm you."
At that Mrs. Ladybug opened her eyes and looked at him. Slowly she thrust her feet out from under her body. And then she tried her wings. They were as good as ever. Her fall had not injured them.
"You gave me a terrible fright," Mrs. Ladybug told him.
Mr. Cricket Frog was very bold now.
"Why were you afraid of me?" heasked her. "Do I look fierce?" he inquired with a hopeful smile, as if he hoped that he did, but scarcely dared think so.
"I'm afraid of all frogs," Mrs. Ladybug explained. "Now, there's Ferdinand Frog—"
"A rascal!" Mr. Cricket Frog cried. "But, madam, I'm not in the least like him. I wouldn't hurt you. In fact, I'd protect you."
His words pleased Mrs. Ladybug. She said that thereafter she should always feel safe, with him in the neighborhood.
Mr. Cricket Frog bowed gallantly, with his hand on his heart.
And Mrs. Ladybug went away without guessing that he had himself played dead because he had been in terror of her.
"What a brave gentleman he is!" Mrs. Ladybug murmured.
Therewas one thing that Mrs. Ladybug dreaded more than any other. That was—fire. The slightest whiff of smoke sent her into a flutter of alarm. The sight of a blaze made her almost frantic.
Perhaps Mrs. Ladybug's neighbors—more than she—were to be blamed for her fear. Some of them had an unkind way of frightening her. When they found her a bit too prying with her countless questions about this, that, and the other matter that did not concern her, they said to her:
"Aren't you worried, Mrs. Ladybug?What if your house were on fire? Wouldn't your children burn?"
Such questions never failed to send Mrs. Ladybug hurrying away.
After a while people began to wonder where Mrs. Ladybug went when she dashed away like that. Nobody seemed to know where she lived. They supposed that she must fly to her home, wherever it was.
To everybody's surprise, Mrs. Ladybug appeared to want to keep the site of her house a secret from all her friends. When they asked her, point-blank, where her house was, she always pretended not to hear the question and left them. Or she would begin to ask questions of her own choosing, without answering theirs.
"Humph!" said some people. "Mrs. Ladybug likes to pry into our affairs. She wants to know all about our business.And when she learns anything about anybody else she can't rest until she has told it to the whole neighborhood."
The more Mrs. Ladybug's friends thought about her house, the harder they tried to discover its whereabouts. Sometimes they even mentionedfireto her and then tried to follow her when she hurried off. But she always managed to give them the slip before she had gone far.
Now and then somebody or other thought he had found Mrs. Ladybug's house. But in the end somebody else was sure to prove that he was mistaken.
Once Freddie Firefly announced with great pride that at last he knew where Mrs. Ladybug was rearing her family.
"Her house," he explained, "is in a hole in the ground, in the meadow."
And that night he led Miss MehitableMoth to the spot, lighting the way with his flickering gleams.
She soon pointed out his mistake. He had led her to the doorway of the Bumblebee family, who were all sound asleep inside their crowded house.
After that Freddie Firefly had to listen to a good many titters from his friends.
"The idea!" they would say. "Mrs. Ladybug must have a much bigger house than the Bumblebee family's. She couldn't squeeze her children into such small quarters as theirs. Why, she has more children than she can count."
Therewas great excitement in Farmer Green's orchard. The neighbors came a-flying and a-running and a-crawling from all directions. And little Mrs. Ladybug was the cause of the hurly-burly. She had appeared with a strange, flaring object hanging by a cord from her waist—if she could be said to have a waist. The queer, dangling thing had a handle at its upper end. And when Mrs. Ladybug moved a jingling, jangling sound might have been heard.
In no time at all a crowd had gathered around her. And some of the more curious and ill-bred pointed at whatever it was that puzzled them.
"What's that?" they asked Mrs. Ladybug.
Strange to say, she seemed pleased with the stir that she had made.
"It's a dinner bell," she explained.
They gazed at it in wonder, until at last somebody spoke up and demanded, "What's it for?"
"To give the alarm with!" she replied.
"What alarm?" chimed a chorus of voices, high and low.
Mrs. Ladybug smiled an odd sort of smile as she answered, "The fire alarm, of course! Everybody's always talkingfireto me. It makes me frightfully uneasy. There's so little one can do alone in case of fire. But now—" she added—"now when anyone says 'Fire!' I'm going to ring this bell with all my might."
Well, people didn't know what to say—then. Later, however, they gathered about in groups and talked a good deal about Mrs. Ladybug and her dinner bell.
Miss Moth said that she feared Mrs. Ladybug would disturb her rest if she rang the bell in the daytime, when Miss Moth was accustomed to sleep. Buster Bumblebee hoped Mrs. Ladybug wouldn't ring it at night, because he had a short enough night's sleep as it was, with the family trumpeter waking everybody in the house about dawn. And Freddie Firefly exclaimed that it would be very annoying to him if Mrs. Ladybug gave the alarm of fire whenever she saw his flickering gleams on pleasant evenings in the meadow.
If others were troubled, Mrs. Ladybug herself was much pleased by her dinner bell. She liked to hear it tinkle as sheworked. She said it was a cheerful sound and so long as she wore it she never needed to worry about being lost. It was as good as a cowbell for letting the world know one's whereabouts.
There was only one thing that annoyed her. Since she hung the bell from her waist nobody had mentionedfireto her. Nobody had said a word about her children's burning. It seemed as if none of her neighbors wanted her to sound a fire alarm. And if there was anything that would have given her joy, it would have been to seize the handle of her bell and ring it madly.
There were even some people that complained of the tinkle it made among the apple trees.
Peppery Polly Bumblebee laughed at them.
"You've brought this trouble uponyourselves," she told them. "How can you expect Mrs. Ladybug to keep the tongue of the bell still? She can't even keep her own tongue from wagging!"
No doubt Peppery Polly knew what she was talking about. She had a very sharp tongue, herself.
Thewhole countryside was dry. Ithadn't rained for weeks. The grass wasturning brown. The water in the riverwas low. And Broad Brook was no more than a narrow trickle. Every morning the sun rose streaming hot, to beat down upon Pleasant Valley all day long until it sank—a round, red ball—behind Blue Mountain each night.
At last, one afternoon, Farmer Green and the hired man started for the woods on a run. They had seen a wisp of smoke curling up from the tree tops. And they knew that the woods were on fire.
There was a high wind that day. And if they hadn't worked lively there's no telling how far the fire would have spread. As it was, glowing bits came sailing down from the hill and settled in the valley. But luckily they did no damage. At least, no other fire had started anywhere when the men came home from the woods and said that all was safe again.
Some of the small folk that lived in the fields knew what was going on. But Mrs. Ladybug never guessed that there had been a fire. She was so busy, working among the apple trees, that she hadn't noticed any unusual stir. And no one took the trouble to tell her about it.
Everyone had put thoughts of fire out of his mind when along toward evening a loud clanging rang out upon the air.
"What's that?" people asked one another.
And all at once somebody shouted, "It's Mrs. Ladybug's dinner bell!"
Far and wide through orchard, garden and meadow the neighbors took up the cry. "Fire! Fire! Mrs. Ladybug's ringing the alarm! Her house is on fire!"
Back and forth they hurried, trying to find Mrs. Ladybug.
"At last—" they told one another—"at last we're going to find out where her house is."
And they did. At least, they soon discovered Mrs. Ladybug standing beside a blazing dwelling near the pasture fence. With all her hands (and she had several!) she was ringing her bell furiously.
"We'll help you!" her friends all cried. "Don't worry, Mrs. Ladybug! We'll have the fire out soon. Be calm!"
But there was nothing they could do. The fire raged so fiercely that theycouldn't get near enough to it to fight it. And before long it had burned itself out. There was nothing left of the house but ashes.
"What a pity!" said Mrs. Ladybug's neighbors. "It was a fine, big house."
And then some one cried, "What about the children? Where are they?"
Nobody knew. If Mrs. Ladybug did, she was too overcome to speak.
People looked very solemn. They hoped her children hadn't burned.
And then—then Mr. Meadow Mouse came running up all out of breath.
"Sakes alive!" he screamed. "My house is ruined. I wouldn't have had this happen for anything. But it doesn't matter, for I can easily build another."
Mrs. Ladybug's neighbors crowded about her, all asking the same question.
"Wasn't this your house?"
"No!" she admitted. "No, it wasn't." And then she made an astonishing confession. "I've never owned a house," she said. "I've never had one in all my life. Ican'thave a house. I couldn't get one that was big enough.
"I have so many children that I don't know what to do," said little Mrs. Ladybug.
Itwas almost fall. The nights—and some of the days—were chilly. Those that had spent the whole summer out of doors began to think about where they should pass the winter. Yet everybody was amazed by the news that Mrs. Ladybug spread broadcast. She said that she expected, soon, to go into winter quarters.
"Humph!" cried Daddy Longlegs' wife when she heard what Mrs. Ladybug was saying. "She never had any quarters, so far as anyone knows. Mrs. Ladybug hasn't been able to tear herself awayfrom the orchard long enough to live anywhere except in the apple trees."
It was plain that Daddy Longlegs' wife didn't believe what Mrs. Ladybug was telling her neighbors. And there were many more folk that agreed with her.
Little Mrs. Ladybug smiled a knowing smile when she heard what her friends thought.
"They'll see! They'll see!" she said. "I'm going to spend the winter in the biggest and finest house on this farm."
That was all she would tell. She wouldn't breathe another word about her plans. And naturally, every one became very curious. There wasn't a soul that wasn't agog to know what Mrs. Ladybug intended to do.
The neighbors asked her, begged her, teased her—some even threatened her. But she declined to answer. She saidthat if she told where she expected to pass the cold months everybody would want to go to the same place and maybe there wouldn't be any room left for her.
Perhaps some of her friendshadintended to follow her into her winter quarters. Anyhow, many of them looked guilty when she made that remark. And a few of them looked angry, and declared that Mrs. Ladybug was selfish.
"If the house is as big as she claims it is, it ought to hold a few extra guests without being crowded," they grumbled.
"Guests—" said Mrs. Ladybug—"guests should always wait for an invitation."
"Have you had one?" Buster Bumblebee asked her.
Mrs. Ladybug did not answer his question. Most people thought Buster Bumblebee a stupid fellow. Many people paidlittle heed to him. Yet strange to say, he often hit the nail on the head, so to speak. And this time he made Mrs. Ladybug somewhat uncomfortable. She had had no invitation to spend the winter in the fine, big house. But she didn't care to have her neighbors know that.
"There's just one thing to do," Buster Bumblebee decided. "I'll ask the Carpenter Bee if he's building a house for her."
So he went to the big poplar by the brook, where the Carpenter Bee lived. And that mild person himself—sawdust-covered as usual—answered Buster's knock at his door.
"Are you building a house for Mrs. Ladybug?" Buster Bumblebee inquired.
"No!" said the Carpenter. "We couldn't agree. She wanted me to work twelve hours a day. And I wanted towork twenty-four. I told her I must havesometime to rest. But she couldn't see things as I did."
Buster Bumblebee was puzzled.
"I don't understand," he said.
The Carpenter kindly made matters clear to him.
"I rest only when I'm working," he explained.
TheCarpenter Bee, who lived in the big poplar by the brook, wasn't building a house for Mrs. Ladybug. That skillful woodworker hadn't been able to agree with her—so he told Buster Bumblebee. Furthermore, he knew nothing of Mrs. Ladybug's present plans as to where she was going to spend the winter.
Nor did anybody else. It was all a great mystery. And Mrs. Ladybug seemed to enjoy it far more than her neighbors did. She was the only person that could have solved it for them. And she wouldn't.
At the same time she took delight in talking about her winter quarters, as she called the place where she intended to live during cold weather.
"It will be cozy and warm there," she often remarked to her callers, of whom she had huge numbers. For there was scarcely a person in the orchard or the garden that didn't burn with curiosity to know more about the fine, big house into which Mrs. Ladybug expected to move.
"My winter quarters will be wind-proof," Mrs. Ladybug told them. And that speech set them all to guessing again.
Almost everybody said then that she was going to live underground.
"I shall not feel a drop of rain—not even during the January thaw," Mrs. Ladybug went on.
And then everybody had to begin guessing all over again; for rain drops weresure to trickle into an underground house during a warm spell.
"You're going to live in a pumpkin!" cried Buster Bumblebee.
And all the neighbors—even Mrs. Ladybug—laughed when they heard that.
Buster knew of an old tune called "The Bumblebee in the Pumpkin," and he cried with some heat that he could think of no reason why there shouldn't be "A Ladybug in a Pumpkin."
"I told you my house was big—the biggest one on the farm," Mrs. Ladybug reminded him.
"Ah!" Chirpy Cricket exclaimed. "Now I know! You're going to live in the haystack. A haystack is cozy and warm; it's wind-proof; it sheds water; and there's nothing bigger anywhere."
It really seemed as if Chirpy Cricket had solved the great mystery.
"He's guessed the riddle!" people said. "You might as well admit now, Mrs. Ladybug, that you're going to spend the winter in Farmer Green's haystack."
But Mrs. Ladybug dashed their hopes.
"You're wrong," she told her friends. "And if to-night's as nippy as last night was, perhaps you'll find out to-morrow where I'm going. For I don't care to freeze my toes here in the orchard."
That night it was colder than ever. And the next day Mrs. Ladybug went all around the orchard and the garden bidding people good-by.
Still she wouldn't tell where she was going. And if Daddy Longlegs hadn't happened to stroll around the cherry tree outside Farmer Green's chamber window that afternoon, nobody would have known where Mrs. Ladybug went. But DaddyLonglegs saw her. And he hastened to spread the news.
"Mrs. Ladybug has gone to spend the winter in the farmhouse!"
SomehowMrs. Ladybug's friends missed her. The orchard seemed quite a different place after she vanished inside the farmhouse to stay there all winter long. In spite of her sharp tongue and her prying ways people discovered—now that she was gone—that they had liked Mrs. Ladybug more than they knew.
While she was with them in the orchard they had often wished she wouldn't ask so many questions. But now the days seemed very long without Mrs. Ladybug to inquirehowandwhyandwhenandwhere.
And then—then a rumor flashed from lip to lip all the way across the garden and the orchard and the meadow: "Mrs. Ladybug is back again! She didn't stay in the farmhouse a week."
And sure enough! the rumor proved to be true. Mrs. Ladybug, looking rather foolish, appeared in her old haunts among the apple trees. She acted as if something had occurred to upset her. And though she seemed glad to be greeted by all her old companions, she didn't want them to ask her a single question as to why she hadn't spent the whole winter, instead of only a few days of early fall, in Farmer Green's house.
If she thought her neighbors weren't going to question her she was sadly mistaken.
Only a little while before they had asked her a thousand and one questions aboutwhereshe was going to live during the winter. And now they were all just as curious to know why she had returned. But this time they asked her a thousand and two questions.
You couldn't say that her answers weren't satisfying, because she didn't make any answers at all.
Of course, things couldn't go on like that forever. Peoplehadto know what had changed Mrs. Ladybug's plans. And in order to persuade the stubborn lady to explain matters, a few of her friends hinted that they expected they would have to go to Farmer Green himself and learn the truth.
"You may ask him if you wish," Mrs. Ladybug told them. "But it won't do you any good. He can't tell you what happened because he doesn't know himself."
"Maybe the farmhouse was cold," Chirpy Cricket suggested.
Mrs. Ladybug made no comment on that remark.
"Perhaps the roof leaked," said Daddy Longlegs.
Still no sign from Mrs. Ladybug.
"She found that the farmhouse wasn't wind-proof," said Daddy Longlegs' wife.
And Mrs. Ladybug didn't deny it; nor did she say that that was so.
Then Buster Bumblebee made one of his blundering speeches.
"It was a short winter, anyhow," he said.
Mrs. Ladybug's neighbors couldn't help tittering. And somehow their amusement stung her into telling the truth about the whole affair, right then and there.
"Mrs. Green and I didn't get on well together," she confessed.
Mrs. Ladybugspoke at last. Her listeners crowded close about her, jostling one another in their eagerness to hear every word she said. For Mrs. Ladybug was recounting her adventures at the farmhouse.
"I flew in through an open window," Mrs. Ladybug began. And she heaved a deep sigh, as if the telling of the tale was costing her much pain.
"I said nothing to anybody," she explained, "because I didn't wish to trouble the family. I knew I could find my way about the house after a little. And itwasn't long before I had discovered the stairway.
"I didn't walk on the stairs for fear there might be mud on my feet," said Mrs. Ladybug. "I didn't walk, but flew up to the second floor and went into the first chamber I saw. There was a fine, big closet off that room. The door leading into it was ajar; so I had no trouble slipping inside it. And there, high up on a broad shelf, I picked out the very spot where I could have spent the winter with every comfort in the world."
At this point Mrs. Ladybug was overcome by her feelings for a few moments. But the company waited politely until she could go on with her story.
She soon continued.
"All went well—" said Mrs. Ladybug—"all went well until one day—this morning, to be exact—Mrs. Green opened thecloset door and began to brush and sweep and wipe and dust. I heard her say that she was doing her fall cleaning. And of course that pleased me; for I was glad to learn that she was a neat housekeeper.
"And then—" here Mrs. Ladybug's voice broke slightly—"and then, the first thing I knew she spied me and cried 'Ah, ha! A Carpet Bug!'
"The next instant she whisked me off the shelf with a brush. Of course I played dead the moment she touched me. And I fell into the dustpan and never so much as wriggled a toe.
"Soon afterward Mrs. Green set the dustpan beside the window which she had already opened. That was my chance. I seized it. I flew out of the window. And here I am."
Mrs. Ladybug's listeners shook their heads in sympathy.
"You had a narrow escape," they told her." It's a wonder you got away."
"Yes!" said Mrs. Ladybug. "And I'm glad now that that window was open. But for a moment I didn't much care what became of me. To think that anybody should mistake me for a Carpet Bug! Mrs. Green ought to know that the Carpet Bug family are covered with black, white and red scales. Ugh!"
Mrs. Ladybug shuddered. She was smooth and shiny herself. So it wasn't strange that she should have felt insulted.
"Anyhow," she added, "Mrs. Green is the loser. Toward spring I would have kept her house plants free from insects. But now, of course, she'll have to do that herself."
"Well," said the neighbors (or words to this effect), "we're glad to see you again.And now—tell us!—where do you expect to spend the winter?"
"I'll let you decide that," Mrs. Ladybug replied.
THE END
A delightful and unusual series of bird and insect stories for boys and girls from three to eight years old, or thereabouts.
GROSSET & DUNLAP,Publishers, NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP,Publishers, NEW YORK
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