"But blackberries aren"t ripe yet. They"re not ripe until June or July,"
objected Bully.
"I know it, but I"m going to hunt mosquitoes, not blackberries. I"m going to kill all I can with my bean shooter, and then there won"t be so many to bite the dear little babies this summer. Don"t you want to come along?" asked Bawly.
"I would if I had a bean shooter," answered Bully. "Perhaps I"ll go some other time. To-day I promised Peetie and Jackie Bow Wow I"d come over and play ball with them."
So Bully went to play ball, with the puppy dogs, and Bawly went hunting, after his mamma had said that he might, and had told him to be careful.
"I"ll put up a little lunch for you," she said, "so you won"t get hungry hunting mosquitoes in the woods."
Off Bawly hopped, with his lunch in a little basket on one leg and carrying his bean shooter, and plenty of beans. He knew a deep, dark, dismal stretch of woodland where there were so many mosquitoes that they wouldn"t have been afraid to bite even an elephant, if one had happened along. You see there were so many of the mosquitoes that they were bold and savage, like bears or lions.
"But just wait until I get at them with my bean shooter," said Bawly bravely. "Then they"ll be so frightened that they"ll fly away, and never come back to bother people any more."
On and on he hopped and pretty soon he could hear a funny buzzing noise.
"Those are the mosquitoes," said the frog boy. "I am almost at the deep, dark, dismal woods. Now I must be brave, as my Grandpa was when he hunted blackberries; and, so that I may be very strong, to kill all the mosquitoes, I"ll eat part of my lunch now."
So Bawly sat down under a toadstool, for it was very hot, and he ate part of his lunch. He could hear the mosquitoes buzzing louder and louder, and he knew there must be many of them; thousands and thousands.
"Well, here I go!" exclaimed the frog boy at length, as he wrapped up in a paper what was left of his lunch, and got his bean shooter all ready.
"Now for the battle. Charge! Forward, March! Bang-bang! Bung-bung!" and he made a noise like a fife and drum going up hill.
"Well, I wonder what that can be coming into our woods?" asked one mosquito of another as he stopped buzzing his wings a moment.
"It looks like a frog boy," was the reply of a lady mosquito.
"It is," spoke a third mosquito, sharpening his biting bill on a stone.
"Let"s sting him so he"ll never come here again."
"Yes, let"s do it!" they all agreed.
So they all got ready with their stingers, and Bawly hopped nearer and nearer. They were just going to pounce on him and bite him to pieces when he suddenly shot a lot of beans at them, hitting quite a number of mosquitoes and killing a few.
"My! What"s this? What"s this?" cried the mosquitoes that weren"t killed. "What is happening?" and they were very much surprised, not to say startled.
"This must be a war!" said some others. "This frog boy is fighting us!"
"That"s just what I"m doing!" cried Bawly bravely. "I"m punishing you for what you did to Grandfather Croaker! Bang-bang! Bung-bung! Shoot!
Fire! Aim! Forward, March!" and with that he shot some more beans at the mosquitoes, killing hundreds of them so they could never more bite little babies or boys and girls, to say nothing of papas and mammas and aunts and uncles.
Oh, how brave Bawly was with his bean shooter! He made those mosquitoes dance around like humming birds, and they were very much frightened.
Then Bawly took a rest and ate some more of his lunch, laying his bean shooter down on top of a stump.
"Now the battle will go on again!" he cried, when he had eaten the last crumb and felt very strong. But, would you believe me, while he was eating, those mosquitoes had sneaked up and taken away his bean shooter.
"Oh, this is terrible!" cried Bawly, as he saw that his tin shooter was gone. "Now I can"t fight them any more."
Then the mosquitoes knew that the frog boy didn"t have his bean-gun with him, for they had hid it, and they stung him, so much that maybe, they would have stung him to death if it hadn"t happened that d.i.c.kie and Nellie Chip-Chip, the sparrows, flew along just then. Into the swarm of mosquitoes the birds flew, and they caught hundreds of them in their bills and killed them, and the rest were so frightened that they flew away, and in that manner Bawly was saved.
So that"s how he went hunting all alone, and when he got home his Grandpa Croaker and all the folks thought him very brave. Now, in case I see a red poodle dog, with yellow legs, standing on his nose while he wags his tail at the p.u.s.s.y cat, I"ll tell you next about Papa No-Tail and the giant.
STORY XIII
PAPA NO-TAIL AND THE GIANT
Did you ever hear the story of the giant with two heads, who chased a whale, and caught him by the tail, and tickled the terrible monster with a big, crooked hickory fence rail?
Well, I"m not going to tell you a story about that giant, but about another, who had only one head, though it was a very large one, and this giant nearly scared Papa No-Tail, the frog gentleman, into a conniption fit, which is almost as bad as the epizootic.
It happened one day that there wasn"t any work for Mr. No-Tail to do at the wallpaper factory, where he dipped his feet in ink and hopped around to make funny black, and red, and green, and purple splotches, so they would turn out to be wallpaper patterns. The reason there was no work was because the Pelican bird drank up all the ink in his big bill, so they couldn"t print any paper.
"I have a holiday," said Papa No-Tail, as he hopped about, "and I am going to have a good time."
"What are you going to do?" asked Grandpa Croaker as he started off across the pond to play checkers with Uncle Wiggily Longears.
"I think I will take Bully and Bawly and go for a swim, and then we"ll take a hop through the woods and perhaps we may find an adventure,"
answered Mr. No-Tail.
So he went up to the house, where Bully and Bawly, the two boy frogs, were just getting ready to go out roller skating, and Mr. No-Tail asked them if they didn"t want to come with him instead.
"Indeed we do!" cried Bully, as he winked both eyes at his brother, for he knew that when his papa took them out hopping, he used often to stop in a store and buy them peanuts or candy.
Well, pretty soon, not so very long, in a little while, Papa No-Tail and the two boys got to the edge of the pond, and into the water they hopped to have a swim. My! I just wish you could have seen them. Papa No-Tail swam in ever so many different ways, and Bully and Bawly did as well as they could. And, would you believe me? just as Bully was getting out of the water, up on the bank, ready to go hopping off with Bawly and his papa through the woods, a big fish nearly grabbed the little frog boy by his left hind leg.
"Oh my!" he cried, and his papa hopped over quickly to where Bully was, and threw a stick at the bad fish to scare him away.
"Ha! hum!" exclaimed Mr. No-Tail, "that was nearly an adventure, Bully, but I don"t like that kind. Come on into the woods, boys, and we"ll see what else we can find."
So into the woods they went, where there were tall trees, and little trees, and bushes, and old stumps where owls lived. And the green leaves were just coming out nicely on the branches, and there were a few early May flowers peeping up from under the leaves and moss, just as baby peeps up at you, out from under the bedclothes in the morning when the sun awakens her.
"Oh, isn"t it just lovely here in the woods!" cried Bully.
"It is certainly very fine," agreed Bawly, and he looked up in the treetops, where Johnnie and Billie Bushytail, the squirrels, were frisking about, and then down on the ground, where Sammie and Susie Littletail, the rabbits, were sitting beside an old stump, in which there were no bad owls to scare them.
"Now I think we"ll sit down here and eat our lunch," said Papa No-Tail after a while, as they came to a nice little open place in the woods, where there was a large flat stump, which they could use as a table. So they opened the baskets of lunch that Mamma No-Tail had put up for them, and they were eating their watercress sandwiches, and talking of what they would do next, when, all of a sudden, they heard a most startling, tremendous and extraordinary noise in the bushes.
It was just as if an elephant were tramping along, and at first Papa No-Tail thought it might be one of those big beasts, or perhaps an alligator.
"Keep quiet, boys," he whispered, "and perhaps he won"t see us." So they kept very quiet, and hid down behind the stump.
But the noise came nearer and nearer, and it sounded louder and louder, and, before you could spell "cat" or "rat," out from under a big, tall tree stepped a big, tall giant. Oh, he was a fearful looking fellow! His head was as big as a washtub full of clothes on a Monday morning, and his legs were so long that I guess he could have hopped, skipped and jumped across the street in about three steps.
"Oh, look!" whispered Bully.