The Tale of Buster Bumblebee

Excerpt

I
THE BIG FAMILY

When Mrs. Field Mouse moved from her home in Farmer Green's meadow to the more fashionable neighborhood near the gristmill, she had no idea that anyone would care to live in the little old house that she had left.

So she was much surprised, the following summer, when she heard that a new family was occupying her former home.

"If it's a small family they'll get along well enough," she remarked to Aunt Polly Woodchuck, who had told her the news.

"Small!" Aunt Polly exclaimed, lifting both her hands (with the black mitts on them) high in the air. "They say it's a dreadful big family—at least two hundred of 'em, so I've been told."

Well, for a moment Mrs. Field Mouse couldn't say a word, she was so astonished. Then she managed to gasp:

"What's their name?"

"I declare, I can't just remember," said Aunt Polly Woodchuck. "But it's a name that rhymes with apple tree—though that's not quite it.... They're a very musical family, I understand. My nephew, Billy Woodchuck, passed right by their door only yesterday; and he says he heard music and the sound of dancing from inside the house."

"Two hundred of them dancing in that little house!" cried Mrs. Field Mouse. "Why, it's positively dangerous! I should think they'd trample one another."

And Aunt Polly Woodchuck agreed, before she went off towards her home under the hill, that there were queer goings-on over there in the meadow.

Later she sent her nephew Billy to tell Mrs. Field Mouse that on her way home she had remembered the name of the big family. It was Bumblebee.

"They must be an odd lot," Mrs. Field Mouse remarked to her husband. "Farmer Green's meadow is becoming more unfashionable than ever. And I shall never regret having moved away from there."

So that was Buster Bumblebee's first home—the old house in the meadow. It was true that the Bumblebee family numbered at least two hundred souls. Nobody knew what the exact count might have been; for in the daytime all the members of the family were bustling about, never staying in one place long enough to be counted. And at night they were all too drowsy to bother their heads over anything but sleep.

It was true, too, that the Bumblebee family filled their house almost to overflowing—especially when they began to store away great quantities of honey in it. But they never seemed to mind being crowded. And if any of them wanted more room he had only to go out of doors and get it.

Buster Bumblebee's mother was the head of the whole family. Everybody always spoke of her as "the Queen." And she never had to lift her hand, because there were other members of the family that were both ready and eager to do everything for her. She was really quite a fine lady.

And it was generally understood that her son Buster favored his mother. Certainly he was—like her—very handsome, in his suit of black and yellow velvet. Like his mother, too, he never did a stroke of work. And although everybody said that Buster Bumblebee was a drone, he never seemed to mind it in the least.