“Here’s a big blossom you haven’t
tasted!” he called to her suddenly. And
Peppery Polly—thinking that Freddie meant
a clover blossom— hastened to a bloom that
Freddie pointed out to her.
She settled upon it quickly. And the next moment
Peppery Polly gave a sharp cry of mingled rage and
pain.
“What’s the matter?” Freddie Firefly
asked her.
“Matter!” she exclaimed. “It’s
a thistle—and I’ve pricked myself
badly.”
“Why, so it is a thistle blossom!” said
Freddie Firefly. “It’s about the
same color as a clover head; and I suppose you didn’t
know the difference in the dark.”
“The question is, did you know the difference?”
Peppery Polly screamed— for she was terribly
angry.
“Really, I must decline to answer when you speak
to me in such a tone,” said Freddie Firefly.
And he was quite surprised that the furious honey-maker
didn’t dart towards him and try to sink her sting
into him.
But nothing of the sort happened. And Freddie
soon saw that Peppery Polly was in some kind of trouble.
CAUGHT BY A THISTLE
“You’ll have to help me,” Peppery
Polly Bumblebee said to Freddie Firefly through the
darkness. “If you’d been a little
less stingy with that light of yours I wouldn’t
have made the mistake of thinking this thistle was
a clover blossom.”
“Well, there’s nectar in it, isn’t
there?” he inquired.
“I suppose so,” she answered. “But
I can’t get it. And I’m so daubed
with the sticky stuff that’s spread right where
I put my feet that I can’t free myself.”
Freddie flew quite close to her and flashed his light
upon her. And he saw that she had spoken truly.
“What a pity!” he exclaimed.
“Don’t stop to talk!” the honey-maker
snapped. “Just help me to get away from
this thistle. And then you can talk all you
want to. In fact, I’ll give you something
to talk about.”
Freddie Firefly was not so dull-witted but that he
knew she intended to punish him for sending her to
the thistle blossom.
“I’ll go back to your house and bring
somebody to help you, if I can,” he said.
“Don’t you see that it wouldn’t be
safe for me to try to pull you loose? I might
get stuck there myself. And we’d be prisoners
for the rest of the night.”
Peppery Polly hadn’t thought of that. And
she was inclined to believe that there might be some
such danger.
“You may go for help,” she said at last.
“But please remember that there’s no time
to lose. The Queen won’t like it at all
when she hears about this accident, for she expected
me to fetch home a good deal of nectar before midnight.”
“I’ll hurry. And I’ll be back
as soon as I can bring one of your fellow-workers
with me,” Freddie Firefly promised.
Since he was a person of his word, he went straight
back to the home of the Bumblebee family in the meadow.
Being used to finding his way about after dark, Freddie
had no trouble reaching the Bumblebees’ home.
But rousing the household was an entirely different
matter. Though he pounded his hardest at their
door, none of the Bumblebee family heard him.
Having always slept from sunset till dawn without once
waking, they were wrapped in such heavy slumber that
not one of them knew what was going on.
