“Why did he fall down out of the tree?” asked the Babe, in a tone of great surprise.
“That ’s just what I—” began Uncle Andy. But he was interrupted.
“Oh! Oh! It’s stung me!” cried the Babe, shrilly, jumping to his feet and slapping at his ear. His eyes filled with injured tears.
Uncle Andy stared at him for a moment in grave reproof. Then he, too, sprang up as if the boulder had suddenly grown red-hot, and pawed at his hair with both hands, dropping his pipe.
“Glory! I see why he fell down!” he cried. The Babe gave another cry, clapped his hand to his leg where the stocking did not quite join the short breeches, and began hopping up and down on one foot. A heavy, pervasive hum was beginning to make itself heard.
“Come!” yelled Uncle Andy, striking at his cheek angrily and ducking his head as if he were going to butt something. He grabbed the Babe by one arm, and rushed him to the fir-thicket.
“Duck!” he ordered. “Down with you, flat!” And together they crawled into the low-growing, dense-foliaged thicket, where they lay side by side, face downward.
“They won’t follow us in here,” murmured Uncle Andy. “They don’t like thick bushes.”
“But I ’m afraid—we ’ve brought some in with us, Uncle Andy,” replied the Babe, trying very hard to keep the tears out of his voice. “I think I hear one squealing and buzzing in my hair. Oh!” and he clutched wildly at his leg.
“You ’re right!” said Uncle Andy, his voice suddenly growing very stern as a bee crawled over his collar and jabbed him with great earnestness in the neck. He sat up. Several other bees were creeping over him, seeking an effective spot to administer their fiery admonitions. But he paid them no heed. They stung him where they would, while he was quickly looking over the Babe’s hair, jacket, sleeves, stockings, and loose little trousers. He killed half a dozen of the angry crawlers before they found a chance to do the Babe more damage. Then he pulled out three stings, and applied moist earth from under the moss to each red and anguished spot.
The Babe looked up at him with a resolute little laugh, and shook obstinately from the tip of his nose the tears which he would not acknowledge by the attentions of his handkerchief or his fist.
“Thank you awfully,’ he began politely. “But oh, Uncle Andy, your poor eye is just dreadful. Oh-h-h !”’
“Yes, they have been getting after me a bit,” agreed Uncle Andy, dealing firmly with his own assailants now that the Babe was all right. “But this jab under the eye is the only one that matters. Here, see if you can get hold of the sting.”
The Babe’s keen eyes and nimble little fingers captured it at once. Then Uncle Andy plastered the spot with a daub of wet, black earth, and peered over it solemnly at the Babe’s swollen ear. He straightened his grizzled hair, and tried to look as if nothing out of the way had happened.
“I wish I ’d brought my pipe along,” he muttered. “It ’s over there by the rock. But I reckon it would n’t be healthy for me to go and get it just yet!”
“What ’s made them so awful mad, do you suppose?” inquired the Babe, nursing his wounds, and listening uneasily to the vicious hum which filled the air outside the thicket.
“It ’s that fool bear!” replied Uncle Andy. “He ’s struck a bee-tree too tough for him to tear open, and he fooled at it just long enough to get the bees good and savage. Then he quit in a hurry. And we ’ll just have to stay here till the bees get cooled down.”
“How long ’ll that be?” inquired the Babe, dismally. It was hard to sit still in the hot fir-thicket, with that burning, throbbing smart in his ear, and two little points of fierce ache in his leg. Uncle Andy was far from happy himself; but he felt that the Babe, who had behaved very well, must have his mind diverted. He fished out a letter from his pocket, rolled himself a cigarette as thick as his finger with his heavy pipe tobacco, and fell to puffing such huge clouds as would discourage other bees from prying into the thicket. Then he remarked consolingly:
“It is n’t always, by any means, that the bees get the best of it this way. Mostly it ’s the other way about. This bear was a fool. But there was Teddy Bear, now, a cub over in the foot-hills of Sugar Loaf Mountain, and he was not a fool. When he tackled his first bee-tree—and he was nothing but a cub, mind you—he pulled off the affair in good shape. I wish it had been these bees that he cleaned out.”
The Babe was so surprised that he let go of his leg for a moment.
“Why,” he exclaimed, “how could a cub do what a big, strong, grown-up bear could n’t manage?” He thought with a shudder how unequal he would be to such an undertaking.
“You just wait and see!” admonished Uncle Andy, blowing furious clouds from his monstrousVol. XL.—30.
