Chapter 23

MAKING GAME OF OLD DOG SPOT



"Where have you been keeping yourself?" Buster Bumblebee cried, the moment he caught sight of Jimmy Rabbit's ears sticking up from behind a head of Farmer Green's lettuce. "It's quite plain that you forgot to meet me, so I might tell you about the raising bee."

At that Jimmy Rabbit promptly replied that he had come there each morning.

"Anyhow," he said, "you promised to meet me. And since you haven't met me until now it must be your fault, for you certainly haven't done as you agreed."

Buster Bumblebee looked puzzled. He was sure that the fault had not been his. But his wits were not so nimble as Jimmy Rabbit's. And he could think of no answer at all.

"Well, what do you know about the raising bee?" Jimmy asked him with an encouraging smile.

"You were mistaken about that," Buster told him eagerly. "There wasn't any raising bee. Farmer Green's neighbors for miles around came to help him put up the frame of his new barn. And afterwards they enjoyed a feast under the trees--and a dance."

Jimmy Rabbit began to shake in a very strange manner.

"Ho! ho!" he cried in a jolly voice. "You are the one that's mistaken--and not I! You saw a raising bee and didn't know it! Farmer Green's friends raised the timbers for the barn. And that's why it's called a raising bee. Any helpful, neighborly gathering like that is known as a bee--though you may not be aware of that fact."

Buster Bumblebee stared open-mouthed. He had never suspected such a thing. But Jimmy Rabbit said it was so. And there was nothing to do but believe him.

"So they had something to eat--and a dance too, eh?" said Jimmy Rabbit pleasantly.

"Yes," said Buster, "and there was a bumblebee in a pumpkin, though I couldn't see him. But old dog Spot said he did. And I suppose I was mistaken, for I thought he was inside a fiddle."

And now Jimmy Rabbit was laughing again, holding his sides and shaking so hard that it seemed as if his ears would fall off if he didn't stop soon.

"No, you were not mistaken at all!" he cried, as soon as he could speak again. "That's an old, old tune. My grandfather has hummed it to me many a time. He used to say that there never was another tune just like it."

"What tune?" Buster Bumblebee asked him. "I must say I don't know what you're talking about."

"Why, The Bumblebee in the Pumpkin!" Jimmy Rabbit informed him. "That's the name of a tune. Every good fiddler knows it. And since the buzzing sound comes out of the fiddle, the bumblebee must be inside it, of course."

For a moment Buster looked almost peevish. He had intended to take Jimmy Rabbit down a peg by telling him he had been