Chapter 12

THE CARPENTER BEE



After Buster Bumblebee left the old house in the meadow, where Mrs. Field Mouse had once lived, he had no real home. Like that quarrelsome rascal, Peter Mink, he would crawl into any good place that he happened to find. Sometimes Buster chose a hole in a fence-rail, and sometimes a crack in the side of one of the farm-buildings. He really didn't much care where he spent the night, provided it was not too far from the flower garden or the clover field.

Not being one of the worrying kind, Buster was quite contented with his lot. And it would never have occurred to him to live in any different style had it not been for a remark that little Mrs. Ladybug made to him one day.

"I should think--" she said--"I should think that the son of a queen ought to have a house of his own, instead of sleeping--like a tramp--where night overtakes him."

Now, Mrs. Ladybug's words did not offend Buster Bumblebee in the least.

"No doubt you know best," he told her. "But how can I build a house? I've never worked in all my life. And I don't intend to begin now."

"Why not get some one to build a house for you?" she asked him.

"I never thought of that!" he cried. "Whom would you suggest?"

"I know the very person!" Mrs. Ladybug told him. "He's a Carpenter Bee; and he lives in the big poplar by the brook. Perhaps you know him. Johnnie Green calls him Whiteface," she said. "They do say he's a very skillful workman."

Buster Bumblebee replied that he had never met the Carpenter, but that he would go and see him at once. So over to the big poplar he flew. And soon he was knocking boldly at the door of the Carpenter's house.

Pretty soon a mild-appearing person, who looked not a little like Buster himself, stepped through the doorway. He wore a white patch across his front and his clothes needed brushing sadly, for they showed many marks of sawdust.

"Are you the Carpenter?" Buster Bumblebee inquired.

The mild stranger said he was.

"How would you like to build a house for me?" Buster asked him.

The Carpenter seemed greatly surprised at the suggestion. "I don't think I'd like it very well," he said timidly.

"Why not?" Buster demanded.

"Well, I'm busy building an addition to my house," the Carpenter explained. "And besides, you're a total stranger. I've never seen you before; and we might quarrel if I did any work for you."

"Oh, no!" Buster Bumblebee assured him. "You couldn't quarrel with me, because I'm the most peace-loving person in Pleasant Valley."

"There!" the Carpenter cried. "I knew as soon as I set eyes on you that we were bound not to agree....