told her. "Maybe you
haven't noticed that every member of the Butterfly family in Pleasant
Valley is covered with dust just as Betsy is."

Mrs. Ladybug looked surprised.

"Is that so?" she said faintly.

"It certainly is!" Bill cried. "Maybe you never knew that the dust is
what gives us our--_ahem_--our beautiful colors," he added proudly. "And
I warn you that if you so much as touch my lovely cousin with that brush
you'll have every one of us fellows in your hair."

Of course poor Mrs. Ladybug was quite bald. But she knew what Butterfly
Bill meant. And she was so upset that she promptly let the paint-brush
fall to the ground.

Then Betsy's cousin nodded approvingly.

"Now you'd better hurry home," he told Mrs. Ladybug. "There's a rumor
around the meadow that your house is on fire. And they say your
children are in great danger."

Little Mrs. Ladybug at once fell to weeping.

"It's that horrid Freddie Firefly!" she shrieked. "I've told him to keep
away from my home. I've told him that he would set it to blazing with
that light of his. But he's forever sneaking around my house as soon as
my back is turned."

"There, there! Don't be frightened!" Betsy Butterfly said to her
soothingly. "It's only a rumor, you know."

"That's so," Mrs. Ladybug admitted, drying her eyes. "I hear it almost
every day, too. But I never can get used to it.... I suppose this is
only a false alarm, after all."

"I wouldn't be so sure about that," Butterfly Bill said wickedly, with
a shake of his head. "And if I were you I'd look after my own family a
little more carefully, instead of troubling myself with other people's
affairs."

Several of Bill's friends applauded his speech. But Betsy Butterfly
whispered to him to hush.

"Don't you see that Mrs. Ladybug is not quite herself?" she asked him.

But Butterfly Bill was not a person to be easily silenced like that.

"She's a meddling busybody!" he declared. "And it's my opinion that she
ought to be put where she'll have to mind her own business."

"Who--me?" called a wheezing voice right in his ear.

Turning, Butterfly Bill saw that it was Jennie Junebug who had spoken
to him. She had noticed the crowd from a distance. And she had just
arrived, quite out of breath.

Before Betsy Butterfly's cousin Bill could answer, Jennie Junebug
actually threatened him.

"If you were talking about me I shall have to knock you down," she
declared.

He had heard that Jennie delighted in fly