Part 2

“Don’t tell me that!” cried the fuzzy, fussy Caterpillar. “The thing is unbelievable! Besides, did I not meet you on your long travel? There, sir, that proves you are soon going to take your long sleep and wake up a Butterfly, unless you have spoiled your chances by telling such a wrong story as that! Perhaps you will say you have not been eating all you can hold, up to this time, on purpose to get ready for the long sleep when there will be no chance to eat.”

“No,” answered the Ant, “I have not been eating all I can hold at all, for my food has about given out, and I have been across the stream to refresh myself with the juice of the berries on a large bush. I could eat a lot more food if I could get it.”

“Oh, well,” said the Caterpillar, “that is because you are young, you see. I was hungry all the time till I grew to my full size. By the time you are as large as I am, you will have had all you want to eat. You see, you have made a mistake. Here you are taking the long journey before you have eaten the proper amount. My dear young sir, you have gotten the matter twisted. You are living your life the wrong side around. You are beginning with the traveling, when you should have begun with the eating and kept at it till you had grown as large as you could. It is a lucky thing you happened to find yourself on my pleasure boat, for if you had not met me you would just go on doing everything the wrong way around. Oh, my, my! You might even have tried to begin being a Butterfly without first falling asleep. Only fancy! Now go right away this minute till you find a tender young bush, and don’t you stop eating that bush till you are my size. Then do your traveling, and you will be ready for the long dream time, and wake up a beautiful Butterfly almost as handsome as I shall be. Run along, now!”

“But aren’t you going to land here, too? You said so,” said the Ant, “and you told me to land first so you could see how I did it. Even if I cannot do as you advise me, because no Ant ever turned into a Butterfly, yet I shall be glad to help you get off to this stone if you want me to hang on to the boat to steady it.”

“Certainly not!” declared the fussy, fuzzy Caterpillar. “I have decided to travel a little farther. I shall not land here at all. I am afraid I should quarrel with you after all if I did. Push me off! I cannot have my chances of becoming a beautiful purple and gold Butterfly, with fancy scallops on the edges of my wings, spoiled by landing. Push me off!”

The Ant pushed as well as he could, but it was really the fuzzy, fussy Caterpillar putting his whole weight on the other side of the boat that started it down the stream again. The last that Anthony Ant saw of him he was walking up and down the deck as fussily as ever as the current swept him out of sight around a large stone.

A VENTURE IN POLITENESS

After there was no more to see of the fussy, fuzzy Caterpillar’s fur coat, the Ant sat a moment to think at the edge of the water, for the words of the Caterpillar had given him much to think about. For one thing, he made up his mind that any one might be too fussy altogether about things, as when the Caterpillar talked so much about who owned the boat, and would not sit or stand still while he talked, but walked up and down the boat in that tiresome way. He had learned that, since Caterpillars did not seem to know about Ants, perhaps Ants did not know all there was to know about Caterpillars, so maybe it was wrong for him to call the Caterpillar fussy. Maybe fussiness was just part of being a Caterpillar.

Ho! but there was another thing he had learned, and that was that it was wrong to quarrel, and especially to quarrel the last thing before going to sleep! Of course his mother often had told him that, and there were times when he had been punished hard for quarreling with his brothers and sisters. But, if even fussy, fuzzy old Caterpillars said it was wrong to quarrel, it must be a thing of truth. Otherwise, fussy, fuzzy old Caterpillars would not have bothered about it.

It did not hurt Anthony Ant to do a little thinking like that, for it was not often that he thought of anything but fun, when he was not carting out loads of earth or hunting for food for the family’s larder. But after a bit he began to think of his rows of shoes waiting for him. Then he must find the spot where he had left his basket and little case.

After tramping a little way upstream, he remembered the spot where he had left them was a little farther down instead. You know, Ants often walk along exactly as though they knew where they were going, and then change their minds and are not so sure after all that was the right way, and back they go and maybe start a dozen different ways before they choose the one they had in mind. Anthony Ant found the right spot before he had made more than two tries at it, and there were his things all right. But, sir, what do you think? Why, a Ladybug and a small Spider, Size Two were helping themselves to the things in his lunch basket, if you please!

Anthony Ant was about to shout, “Here, you stop that! That is my basket,” when he suddenly thought of the fussy, fuzzy Caterpillar and how horrid it sounded when the Caterpillar tried to say he owned the boat. And all at once the Ant became more polite than he ever had been at home when he did not like the way things were going.

“I beg your pardon,” said he, “but do you know I left my lunch basket and little dressing case here when I went across the brook after berry juice? So I have come back to get them, if you do not mind.”

Well, sir, you should have seen what happened! Why, the Ladybug and the small Spider, Size Two were so surprised at the politeness, they backed off and sat down and just stared at Anthony. It was some time before either spoke, and then the Ladybug found her voice.

“It is quite true that I am a Ladybug,” said she, “and so it is not unusual for me to be spoken to politely by gentlemen, but in all my life I never have been spoken to so pleasantly by any one. It is all the more to be wondered at when you find me meddling with what does not belong to me, too. Most Bugs of any kind would have scolded me or boxed my ears or at least hollered at me to get out, but you are a real gentleman if ever there was one!”

“Yes,” said the small Spider, Size Two. “Most Bugs would have eaten me up or bitten me or something. I never was so kindly spoken to before when I was poking about other people’s property. You must have been to college, I should say. I have heard that by the time one goes through school and college one has fine manners, and yours are the finest I have seen around here.”

Oh, my! How proud Anthony Ant was, to be sure! He was so glad he had remembered about the Caterpillar before he said the bad words.

“No,” he answered, “I have not been to college at all. I am on a trip around the world, so I am not going to college this year, I am sure.”

“Well,” said the Ladybug, “seeing the world also gives one fine manners, but it depends upon how you go about it, of course. If it is not well managed, it makes some people most disagreeable, and they come back home so rude you would not want to know them.”

“How fine a fellow you must be,” exclaimed the small Spider, Size Two, “to go all around the world in order to get good manners! It must be much harder than going through college.”

Now, Anthony Ant was honest, whatever he wasn’t, and he had to hang his head, for we know very well why he was taking the trip around the world.

So he said, “Oh, I beg your pardon, but you are both mistaken, for I haven’t good manners at all. I was cross when I left home, and I wouldn’t work when my mother asked me to, nor go hunting for things for our family to eat. So Dr. Beetle Bug told my mother I needed a change, and they both have sent me off on this trip.”

“Dr. Beetle Bug, did you say?” asked the Ladybug. “Do you mean Dr. Alexander Beetle Bug?”

“Yes,” said Anthony Ant. “Do you know him?”

“Oh, yes, indeed!” she replied, laughing.

“So do I,” put in the small Spider, Size Two, “and he is one of the most famous doctors in the world. It pays to follow his advice, and when I see him next time I’ll tell him I met you and that you are better already.”

“Tell me,” said the Ladybug, “is this the best lunch you can find? It looks so queer to me. I did not know that Ants ate such strange food.”

“Oh, that is because it has been all joggled up,” explained the Ant, and he told how he had run so hard and fast from the Angleworm.

“It was really and truly a most delicious lunch when Mother put it up for me, and all the sandwiches were wrapped up carefully in waxed paper. But now, dear me, what a mess they are in! And sand has gotten into all the food, but I did not dare to throw it away. It is not easy to find food sometimes. All I have had since eating some of the joggled-up lunch is the berry juice from the berries over the brook. I am going after my shoes and stockings, which I left under a big stone near here. Then I shall take all my things across the brook to the bush and gather some of the dried berries that still are sweet. They will last me till I can find something more nourishing.”

“Why,” said the Ladybug, “I can tell you something that will help you right out of your trouble. Not far from that berry bush is the finest restaurant you ever saw. It is called the Wild-Rose Tea House, and it is of the sort where you go around and help yourself to what you like best, and pay as you go away.”

“It sounds tempting,” said the Ant, “but, you see, Mother did not give me any money, and I have to live on what I can get myself.”

Then up spoke the small Spider, Size Two. “Ho!” cried he. “I have a plan. Let us all go there and have a party. It happens to be my birthday, and I invite you to come to my birthday party. Run along and get your shoes and stockings, Mr. Ant, and we’ll wait for you here. Then we’ll all go over the brook to the Wild-Rose Tea House.”

Well, Anthony felt ashamed to accept the invitation, but they both begged so hard that at last he said he would. Then he hurried after his shoes and stockings.

AT THE WILD-ROSE TEA HOUSE

When Anthony Ant had come back with his shoes and stockings, he first washed himself carefully at the brook, and combed his hair, and brushed his teeth with the nice Marsh-Mint Dental Cream his mother had put into his case for him. The Ladybug and the small Spider, Size Two sat near by watching him and praising the pretty and the nice-smelling toilet articles his mother had put in for him. The Ladybug wrote down the name of his soap in her notebook so she could get some at the first large field drug store she came to. The soap was called Meadow-Scent Soap. The paper it was wrapped in said the soap was the best for the skin and made a good lather even in the coldest and hardest spring water.

“I am more than ever sure, Mr. Ant,” said she, “that if you had not told me you never had been to college I never should have known it. Any one with such good manners as yours, and also such fancy toilet articles, could easily make any one think he had been through the most noted college in the world.”

“You are most kind,” said the Ant. “I can see now that it paid when Mother made me take pains with my washing and dressing, though I used to cry so hard when she was teaching me, and I hated to have my ears washed and squealed like a good fellow.”

“Or a bad fellow, maybe you meant,” suggested the small Spider, Size Two.

“You are right,” the Ant answered. “But I am taking a lot of pains now, for since you have invited me to your birthday party I must look as clean as I can.”

At last his last shoe was on and tied neatly, and he had flicked the dust from the shoes as well as he could with a little tuft of grass he used as a whisk broom, and off the party started. The small Spider, Size Two asked to be allowed to carry the lunch basket for luck. The Ant let him do it, as the small Spider, Size Two really seemed to want to. The three soon found a good place to wait for some floating thing coming downstream they might use for a boat.

It was not long before a fine large piece of wood--a clean flat chip from a tree--came sailing down. It was white and freshly cut from some tree a woodcutter was chopping down in the woods somewhere.

“Oh!” cried the Ladybug. “What a lovely excursion boat! The decks must have been newly scrubbed and the whole thing painted white on purpose for our birthday celebration. It is going to stop, too. See, it is coming straight to the shore right here!”

Sure enough! Any one could see that. It came as though by a sort of magic trick, for the fresh chip sailed as straight toward them as though it had been alive and they had called to it. In fact, Anthony Ant had called to it in his excitement, “Hey, there! Chip, ahoy!”

Even in his excitement he had thought it more suitable to say, “_Chip_, ahoy!” than “_Ship_, ahoy!” you see.

The current brought it to the shore in this quiet pool, though the chip was so large that the end of it still reached the edge of the current and the little boat bobbled a bit--if there _is_ such a word as _bobble_, and if there isn’t there ought to be, for that is what the boat did anyway. Before the Ant could help the Ladybug aboard politely, as he intended to do, she had flown aboard herself, so eager was she to try that snowy-white deck. So the Ant and the small Spider, Size Two tossed the little dressing case and the lunch box on to the boat and then made quick jumps themselves. They were not a second too soon, either, for the current was coaxing the little chip back again to do more than just bobble idly at the edge of the pool. Off it went to the center of the brook as the current told it to, and the fun really began.

“I wish we could sail all day like this,” said the Ladybug with a deep sigh. “It is the best boat I ever have tried, and I have tried a great many different kinds. It smells so nice too, the wood is so sweet. And to be on the water a day like this is a dream of happiness.”

“Well,” said the small Spider, Size Two, “why can’t we come aboard it again, and sail downstream after the party? I almost feel it in my bones that this boat will wait for us till then, and the things I feel in my bones always come true. Even in the matter of the making of a new web house, I go by the feeling in my bones. When I start to plan the house, if the feeling in my bones tells me the place I have chosen for the house is not the right one, I never build there. I start another house; and if the feeling in my bones tells me I am right, I know I am, and I just build the house right off. The feeling in my bones never has failed to tell me the truth. So, as it now tells me we can take this trip after the party, I believe we can.”

The Ladybug clapped her wings up and down for joy at that, and Anthony Ant felt that Dr. Alexander Beetle Bug knew how to write prescriptions. There surely could not be anything better for any one than a change.

Well, sir, the next stop of the chip came sooner than they expected. A little sudden breeze from the side sent them up against a huge water-soaked log that must have lain in the brook for years. The current, acting with the breeze at the same time, made the chip dart suddenly up back of this log where the water was so still that the little boat did not bobble at all, but lay quiet on the surface close to the log.

“There, sir!” exclaimed the small Spider, Size Two. “The feeling in my bones must be true, for the boat is safe enough in this harbor for one while. There’s no danger of anything but a strong breeze from this side taking it away again, and as the wind is the other way we have nothing to worry about.”

They crawled up the log to the top. The Ladybug could have flown across the brook as well as not, of course, instead of having to wait for a boat to help her part way over. But often she chose to travel as the Bugs that cannot fly travel; and, as she was making this trip with these two that could not fly, she stayed with them.

It was a long trip to the Wild-Rose Tea House from that landing place, but they made it in short time. Soon they were seated, as cosy as you please, about a green leaf table with an extra leaf put in so they would not be crowded, and they had the daintiest birthday-special luncheon, as it was called, served to them by the Rosebug waiter. The dishes were shaped like wild roses, and there was a bit of rose flavor in nearly all the food that was served. Sandwiches of rose petals were cut into rose shape. Instead of lettuce, rose leaves were used shredded into ribbons, and the salad, made of wild berries and woods small fruits, was arranged on the leaf ribbons. When the ice cream came, it was found to be pink and in the form of roses. Even the Ladybug, who had been there before, had to say, “Oh!” it was so delicious. There was a birthday cake too, with candles of pink, and the candles gave out rose scent while burning. This was no common cafeteria meal.

Then came a surprise Ant Venture for the Ant. At a sign from the small Spider, Size Two, the waiter placed Anthony’s lunch basket before Anthony and raised the cover. Inside, in the most delicate pink Japanese napkins of rose pattern, was enough of each thing served at the Wild-Rose Tea House to last Anthony for several meals. A card tied to the handle with pink ribbon said:

FOR A PERFECT GENTLEMAN WITH THE COMPLIMENTS OF DOT-TY LADYBUG AND WEB-STER SPIDER

Oh, my, my, my! Such a glow went all through Anthony Ant that he felt as pink as the pinkest rose that ever blossomed on that bush. And to think that all this joy had come to him because he had not said the cross words he nearly said when he found these friends meddling with his basket! Why, he was beginning to have a feeling in his bones, too, and the feeling in his bones told him that all that Mother Antoinette Ant ever had told him about being kind and calm and speaking gently was perfectly true!

A VENTURE IN PLEASURE

The Ant noticed that before they left the Wild-Rose Tea House the Ladybug and the small Spider, Size Two, after a talk aside with the waiter, each had a confectioner’s box to carry. He thought probably they had bought some of the wild-rose fancy cakes to take home to their families. But he was so busy thinking how to say “Thank you” to them for their present to him, and for the party too, that he thought no more about the boxes, and they all went back down the bush to the place where the log would bring them to the boat once more.

They spied the white chip gleaming against the dark water below them, as safe as possible. It did not take them many minutes to get aboard and to stow their parcels in a space in the middle where no bobbling would jubble them off into the water. _Jubble_ is a most uncommon word too, and means what would happen if the boat should bobble so hard that the things would be thrown off into the water. Then they sat down to wait, as there was nothing else to do. They all three tried to poke the boat away from the log by pushing against the log as hard as they could with their hands all at once. But, in spite of all the hands they had among the three of them, there was not strength enough, with all of them pushing, to send the boat out into the free water.

“The wind will change sooner or later,” said the small Spider, Size Two. “That is one thing always true about wind--it has to change sooner or later. Sometimes it is sooner and sometimes it is later. This may be one of the later times, but there is nothing easier to do than waiting. While we are waiting we can plan about how far we can go and how long we can stay.”

“If we have to start late, we cannot stay long nor go far,” said the Ladybug, “for there will be the journey back to take, except for you, Mr. Ant. You won’t have to go back, of course, since you are traveling around the world. All you will have to do will be to land when we do, and keep on going to the right. But we have families who need us, so we have to go back.”

“That is so,” the Ant answered, and already he felt sorry to think that the trip with these friends could not go right on. If only they would go around the world with him! He teased them to say they would, but they said that, as much as they would like to travel with him, they must not. Besides, they added, they were not in need of a change, as they were so happy at home with their families that the families were quite all the change they needed.

“Anyway, we can have a happy time all the afternoon,” said the Ladybug, “for our families will not need us till night. Never think about the saying good-by part of a pleasure until the good-by part of it comes, is my motto.”

“That is a fine motto,” said the small Spider, Size Two. “I wish I had it embroidered and framed to hang over the mantelpiece in every house I build.”

“Some day I shall be glad to embroider it for you,” said the Ladybug.

“Oh, and will you embroider one for me, too?” asked the Ant eagerly. “I am sure Mother would be so pleased, for she says things that sound like that. I’ll ask her to invite you to pay us a long visit when I get back, if you will. You’d love Ant-Hill Manor, I know!”

“But you don’t love it, do you?” said the Ladybug. “You were so eager to leave it, you see.”

“Well,” replied the Ant, looking much ashamed of himself, “to tell you the truth, I think it was the work I wanted to leave more than it was the home.”

“Well, the change will show you a grand mistake in that way of thinking,” the Ladybug told him, “but I shall be glad to embroider the motto for you if you really care to have it.”

“Oh, thank you!” cried the Ant. “Give me your address, and when I come back from my trip I shall be glad to call for it some day, and bring you the invitation to our home at the same time.”

“It is Knot-Hole Barkalow,” said the Ladybug, “and it is in the knot hole of the big elm tree nearest the place you found us. My house is really a small bungalow, but it fitted the house better to call it a _barkalow_. You come up the tree and tap seven times, and I shall know who it is. In case you get no answer, you will know I am out on a little marketing trip or doing errands that have to be done, so walk in and make yourself at home till I come back.”

“Thank you,” said the Ant, and wrote the address in his notebook.

And then, oh me, oh my! There was a frightful splash in the water near them, and the little boat bobbled so hard that not only their baggage but they themselves were nearly jubbled into the brook.

“What was that?” cried Anthony Ant, much scared.

“It must have been an earthquake!” said the Ladybug.

“More like a waterquake, I should say!” gasped the small Spider, Size Two, who had swallowed some of the water that splashed into his face.

“Oh, now I know what it was!” cried the Ladybug. “It was only a Bullfrog jumping from the log. This must be his diving pool. Oh, but look! We are sailing at last!”

So they were, and in that plunge Mr. Bullfrog had done them a good turn rather than a bad overturn! The boat was floating out into the brook again, and the voyage downstream had begun. Gently sailed the boat. Though it still bobbled a little from its shaking, it bobbed evenly and was in no danger of giving its passengers an unhappy jubbling at present.