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.

II

CHIRPY CRICKET'S ADVICE

If the summers in Pleasant Valley had been longer perhaps the
honey-makers in Buster Bumblebee's home would have taken a holiday now
and then. But they knew that every day that passed brought cold weather
that much the nearer. So they never once stopped working--except to sleep
at night. And, like Farmer Green himself, they felt that they must not
waste any of the precious daylight by lying abed late in the morning.
They wanted to be up and in the clover field as soon as it was light.

Now, with Rusty Wren living right beneath his bedroom window to wake him
at dawn, Farmer Green had no trouble in getting up in good season. But
the Bumblebee family were in no such luck. Even if Rusty Wren had lived
near them in the meadow they could scarcely