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We had checked up on the stock and were following the trail homeward. Ranger West rode in front on Black Dixie. Ordinarily he would have been humming like an overgrown bumblebee, or talking to Dixie, who he said was the only female he knew he would tell secrets to. But we had ridden far that day, and the heat radiated from the great ore rocks was almost beyond endurance.
They're fiddling," he explained; "three fiddlers fiddling upon fiddles.... There's going to be a dance, you know," old dog Spot continued. "And of course nobody cares to dance without music." "Oh, certainly not!" Buster Bumblebee agreed. And he began to be glad he had come to the farmyard, after all. You see, he was fond of music and dancing.
Listen to the bird, and the maid, and the bumblebee, Tra, la la la la, tra, la la la la, Joyfully we'll sing the gladsome melody, Tra, la, la, la, la. The singing-school added little to the knowledge or the cheerfulness of that neighbourhood. It came to an end the last day of the winter term. As usual, Trove went home with Polly.
It was most annoying so Buster thought. But all at once a comforting idea popped into his head. "Old dog Spot was wrong, wasn't he?" Buster cried. "He certainly was," Jimmy Rabbit replied. "Ha! ha!" laughed Buster Bumblebee. "Isn't it odd how stupid some people are?" "It certainly is!" said Jimmy Rabbit. And for some unknown reason he laughed harder than ever before.
"Oh-h-h, das-a fine music," he cried, clapping his hands as Nils finished. "Now 'Marble Halls, Marble Halls'! Clara, you sing him." Clara smiled and leaned back in her chair, beginning softly: "I dreamt that I dwelt in ma-a-arble halls, With vassals and serfs at my knee," and Joe hummed like a big bumblebee. "There's one more you always played," Clara said quietly, "I remember that best."
But her ingratitude is not yet complete. He may have barely accomplished his desperate purpose of fertilizing her eggs at all hazards, when she ends the process by eating him. The male bumblebee fertilizes the female in the late summer and then dies. She does not lay her eggs before the next season.
Strange as it may seem, in spite of his cruel beak, his long wings, and his spiny feet, he looked not a little as if he might have been a near relation of Buster Bumblebee. Of course, any member of the Bumblebee family would have known at a glance that he was not one of them. But probably Johnnie Green if he had noticed him would have thought the Robber Fly some sort of bumblebee.
But now he said nothing more, though he continued to stare angrily at Buster Bumblebee, who was glad to see Betsy Butterfly, and was telling her as much, too. AT last Joseph Bumble's displeasure passed all control. He began to buzz as loud as he could, hoping to drown Buster Bumblebee's buzzing, so that Buster could no longer talk to Betsy Butterfly.
"And as for his being related to me, that's all humbug. This stranger is no kin either to the Bumblebee or any other Bee family. But his voice is so much like ours that he's taken part of our name, though our family has always claimed that he has no right to it." "Who are you?" Joseph Bumble demanded of Buster quite fiercely. He was determined to put his enemy to rout if he could.
Of course it was a bit difficult to avoid them entirely in a family of two hundred or more, all living together in a medium-sized house. And so Buster Bumblebee decided at last that he would be far happier in some place that was not so crowded, and where there was no work going on and no workers. And so, one fine August day, Buster left the family home, never to set foot inside it again.
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