han ever, especially when Mrs. Ladybug
said:

"Wouldn't you like to come with me while I look for Betsy?"

"I must go home now, thank you!" said Mehitable. And she hurried away
without another word.

But Jennie Junebug spoke up at once and said she would be delighted to
accompany Mrs. Ladybug.

"Really," Jennie confided to her companion, "it's a good thing to have
backs as hard and slippery as yours and mine. For the dust can't stick
to us as it does to some."

"There's no excuse for not keeping oneself neat," Mrs. Ladybug said
severely. "And I shall give Betsy Butterfly a piece of my mind."

V

NO JOKER

MUCH to Mrs. Ladybug's surprise, she did not find Betsy Butterfly in the
flower garden.

"It's too bad she's not here," Mrs. Ladybug remarked to her friend
Jennie Junebug, who accompanied her. "We'll have to look in the meadow.
And it may take a long time to find Betsy there."

Jennie Junebug yawned right in Mrs. Ladybug's face.

"Then I can't come with you," she said. "I'm getting terribly sleepy
again. And since I expect to be up all night, I'm going to take a nap."

Mrs. Ladybug looked at Jennie with great disapproval as that fat young
person crept under a leaf and went to sleep.

"Things have come to a pretty pass when ladies stay out all night!" she
muttered. "It was not that way when I was a girl. But times have changed
for the worse."

The longer Mrs. Ladybug stared at her sleeping friend, the more she
thought that she ought to wake her up. "If I rouse her she'll be so
drowsy to-night that she'll simply have to go to bed," Mrs. Ladybug
thought.

So she poked Jennie Junebug several times.

But Jennie Junebug only stirred slightly and murmured something in her
sleep.

And seeing that it was useless to try to awaken her Mrs. Ladybug set out
for the meadow alone.

The sun hung low in the west when Mrs. Ladybug found Betsy Butterfly
among a clump of milk-weed blossoms. But Mrs. Ladybug did not care what
time it was. She was satisfied when she saw that Betsy was just as dusty
as ever. For, to tell the truth, little Mrs. Ladybug was so jealous of
the beautiful Betsy that she _wanted_ to say something disagreeable to
her.

"Hasn't this been a lovely day?" Betsy Butterfly cried happily, as soon
as she noticed Mrs. Ladybug. "I've enjoyed every moment of it. Ever
since I saw you in the flower garden this morning I've been here in the
meadow, flitting from one blossom to another."

"You