knew_ you weren't
the sort of relation I'd want anything to do with."

Then Mrs. Ladybug left her.

Later, when Chirpy Cricket met her, he asked her if she had seen her
cousin who was spending the summer among the squash vines. And he was
astonished when Mrs. Ladybug glared at him and exclaimed:

"Never mention her to me again!"

XIII

JENNIE JUNEBUG

JENNIE JUNEBUG was a frolicsome fat person. And she was a great joker.
The joke that she loved most was this: she loved to bump into people
that were flying through the air--to bump into them and knock them,
spinning, upon the ground.

Being much heavier than many of her neighbors, Jennie Junebug suffered
little from such collisions. And she never could understand why anybody
should find fault with her favorite sport. If a body objected to her
rough play Jennie Junebug only laughed heartily.

"I don't mind when I take a tumble," she would retort. "So why should
you?"

And if the sufferer complained that it wasn't the tumble that hurt, so
much as the shock of her hard, bulky self, Jennie would shake with
merriment and crash into him again.

Really, it was useless to try to reason with her. The safest way was to
avoid her if possible, especially after dark. For then was the time that
she preferred for her rowdy tricks.

Mrs. Ladybug couldn't abide her. Not only did she dislike Jennie
Junebug's jokes. She disapproved of her treatment of Farmer Green. For
Jennie Junebug did everything she could to ruin the trees on the farm.
She ate their leaves. And that was one thing that Mrs. Ladybug couldn't
forgive in anybody.

"It's a shame--" Mrs. Ladybug often said--"it's a shame, the way Jennie
Junebug riddles the foliage. Here I work my hardest to save the leaves
by ridding them of tiny insects that feed upon them--insects that suck
the juices from the leaves and make them wither. And there's Jennie
Junebug, trying her best to destroy the leaves that I save.... It's
enough to make an honest person weep."

Perhaps Jennie Junebug wasn't so bad, at heart, as Mrs. Ladybug thought
her. Maybe she was merely a gay, careless creature who never stopped to
consider that she was injuring Farmer Green when she hurt his trees. At
least, that was what some of Mrs. Ladybug's other neighbors sometimes
remarked.

But Mrs. Ladybug never could believe that Jennie had a single good
trait--unless it was good nature. For she was always ready with a laugh,
no matter what anybody