Chapter 7

BUTTERFLY BILL



NOW, a crowd had gathered quickly around Betsy Butterfly and Mrs. Ladybug; for the field people are quick to notice anything unusual. And a sprightly young cousin of Betsy's known as Butterfly Bill said to Mrs. Ladybug, with a wink at everybody else:

"I suppose you'll dust the rest of us, too?"

"Only those that need it!" replied Mrs. Ladybug.

"Then you'll have your hands full," Butterfly Bill told her. "Maybe you haven't noticed that every member of the Butterfly family in Pleasant Valley is covered with dust just as Betsy is."

Mrs. Ladybug looked surprised.

"Is that so?" she said faintly.

"It certainly is!" Bill cried. "Maybe you never knew that the dust is what gives us our--ahem--our beautiful colors," he added proudly. "And I warn you that if you so much as touch my lovely cousin with that brush you'll have every one of us fellows in your hair."

Of course poor Mrs. Ladybug was quite bald. But she knew what Butterfly Bill meant. And she was so upset that she promptly let the paint-brush fall to the ground.

Then Betsy's cousin nodded approvingly.

"Now you'd better hurry home," he told Mrs. Ladybug. "There's a rumor around the meadow that your house is on fire. And they say your children are in great danger."

Little Mrs. Ladybug at once fell to weeping.

"It's that horrid Freddie Firefly!" she shrieked. "I've told him to keep away from my home. I've told him that he would set it to blazing with that light of his. But he's forever sneaking around my house as soon as my back is turned."

"There, there! Don't be frightened!" Betsy Butterfly said to her soothingly. "It's only a rumor, you know."

"That's so," Mrs. Ladybug admitted, drying her eyes. "I hear it almost every day, too. But I never can get used to it.... I suppose this is only a false alarm, after all."

"I wouldn't be so sure about that," Butterfly Bill said wickedly, with a shake of his head. "And if I were you I'd look after my own family a little more carefully, instead of troubling myself with other people's affairs."

Several of Bill's friends applauded his speech. But Betsy Butterfly whispered to him to hush.

"Don't you see that Mrs. Ladybug is not quite herself?" she asked him.

But Butterfly Bill was not a person to be easily silenced like that.

"She's a meddling busybody!" he declared. "And it's my opinion that she ought to be put where she'll have to mind her own business."

"Who--me?" called a wheezing voice right in his ear.

Turning, Butterfly Bill saw that it was Jennie Junebug who had spoken to him.