For a long time nothing happened. And Cuffy was
just about to give up his plan when a bee came buzzing
past him and lighted on a mulberry blossom right above
his head. And when the bee flew away, Cuffy followed
him until he lost sight of him. And then Cuffy
sat down once more. Again he waited and watched.
And again, just as he was getting discouraged, another
bee flew past him and Cuffy jumped up and followed
him just as fast as he could.
[Illustration: The Bees Were Right There Waiting
for Cuffy]
Cuffy Bear must have spent as much as two hours doing
that same thing over and over again. But he didn’t
mind that. In fact, it didn’t seem long
to him, at all, because he kept thinking of honey
all the time, and it made a sort of game of
what he was doing. If he won the game, you know,
it meant that he was going to have something very nice
for a prize.
And sure enough, finally one of the bees Cuffy was
following lighted on an old tree, and Cuffy saw him
crawl into a hole in a queer nest which hung from
a limb, and vanish. And as Cuffy stood there,
looking up at the nest, he saw as many as seven bees
come out of that hole and fly away.
Then Cuffy smiled all over his face, he felt so happy.
At last he had found a bee-tree. There was no
doubt about it. The time he had always wished
for had come. He was going to have all the honey
he could eat.
THE BEES STING CUFFY
As Cuffy Bear stood there on his hind legs looking
up at the nest in the old tree he saw so many bees
come out and fly away that he thought that there could
not be any bees left at home—at least, not
more than a half-dozen. And Cuffy didn’t
believe that six bees would trouble him. There
was one good thing in having a coat like his, he told
himself: even if it was warm in summer, it was
so thick that he didn’t see how a bee could
sting him through it.
And with that, Cuffy started to climb the old tree.
It took him no time at all to hitch himself up the
trunk. He shinned up just as any little boy would
climb a tree. And in less time than it takes to
tell it, Cuffy had reached the limb from which the
nest hung, and he had stuck his paw right through
the side of it.
You remember that something is always happening in
the forest? Well—something happened
now. Suddenly a terrible roar came from inside
the nest. It was a queer, far-off sort of sound,
and it made Cuffy think of the noise Swift River made,
where it tumbled over the falls. But Cuffy knew
that there could be no water-fall inside the nest.
He wondered if there was some strange animal in there....
And he drew back his paw very quickly. And then
there came pouring out of the nest a perfect cloud
of bees, every one of them buzzing as loud as ever
he could.
Cuffy was startled at the sight. And he was more
startled when they flew right into his face and lighted
on his nose and began to sting.
