Chapter 4

BUSTER FINDS A SISTER



Buster Bumblebee's announcement that he was a queen's son--and a gentleman--seemed to amuse the trumpeter hugely. She held her sides and laughed uproariously.

"That's nothing!" she said at last. "I'm one myself!"

"One what?" Buster asked her quickly. "You're certainly no gentleman--for you just referred to yourself as a lady not two minutes ago. And neither can you be anybody's son, I should think."

"I mean I'm a queen's daughter--though maybe you didn't know it," the trumpeter replied.

And Buster Bumblebee answered in a dazed fashion that he had had no idea she was of royal blood, like himself.

"It's true," the trumpeter assured him. "You'd never guess it; but I'm your own sister."

Well, Buster Bumblebee was so surprised that he almost fell off the clover-head on which he was sitting. It was really a sad blow to be told that that disagreeable, vixenish trumpeter, who awakened the workers each morning, was so closely related to him. But it was no more than he might have expected, living as he did in a family of more than two hundred souls.

"It's--it's hard to believe," he gasped, shaking his head slowly.

"It certainly is," said the trumpeter. "I don't understand how my own brother can be so lazy as you are."

"It's not that I'm lazy--it's the way my mother brought me up," Buster protested.

"Our mother, you mean," the trumpeter corrected him. "Maybe you're right.... After all, you'd only be in everybody's way if you tried to work--you're so awkward and clumsy. So maybe it's just as well for you to play the gentleman--though you must find it a dull life."

"It suits me," said Buster. "But I do wish you could manage to rouse the workers in the morning without disturbing me." He was bolder, now that he knew he was talking to his own sister.

The trumpeter pondered for a little time before replying.

"It's my duty to trumpet loudly," she said at last. "The summer is none too long. And there's a great deal of honey to be made before fall.... Have you thought of stuffing your ears with cotton?" she inquired.

"Why, no!" said Buster Bumblebee. "That's a fine plan, I'm sure. And I'll follow it this very night."

So he thanked his new-found sister and said good-by, for he wanted to look for some cotton at once.

"Goodness me!" the trumpeter exclaimed as soon as Buster had left her. "Here I've wasted a precious quarter of an hour when I should have been working." Thereupon she began gathering nectar as fast as she could, and forgot all about Buster Bumblebee and his trouble.

When he left the trumpeter in the clover