JENNIE JUNEBUG
JENNIE JUNEBUG was a frolicsome fat person. And she was a great joker. The joke that she loved most was this: she loved to bump into people that were flying through the air--to bump into them and knock them, spinning, upon the ground.
Being much heavier than many of her neighbors, Jennie Junebug suffered little from such collisions. And she never could understand why anybody should find fault with her favorite sport. If a body objected to her rough play Jennie Junebug only laughed heartily.
"I don't mind when I take a tumble," she would retort. "So why should you?"
And if the sufferer complained that it wasn't the tumble that hurt, so much as the shock of her hard, bulky self, Jennie would shake with merriment and crash into him again.
Really, it was useless to try to reason with her. The safest way was to avoid her if possible, especially after dark. For then was the time that she preferred for her rowdy tricks.
Mrs. Ladybug couldn't abide her. Not only did she dislike Jennie Junebug's jokes. She disapproved of her treatment of Farmer Green. For Jennie Junebug did everything she could to ruin the trees on the farm. She ate their leaves. And that was one thing that Mrs. Ladybug couldn't forgive in anybody.
"It's a shame--" Mrs. Ladybug often said--"it's a shame, the way Jennie Junebug riddles the foliage. Here I work my hardest to save the leaves by ridding them of tiny insects that feed upon them--insects that suck the juices from the leaves and make them wither. And there's Jennie Junebug, trying her best to destroy the leaves that I save.... It's enough to make an honest person weep."
Perhaps Jennie Junebug wasn't so bad, at heart, as Mrs. Ladybug thought her. Maybe she was merely a gay, careless creature who never stopped to consider that she was injuring Farmer Green when she hurt his trees. At least, that was what some of Mrs. Ladybug's other neighbors sometimes remarked.
But Mrs. Ladybug never could believe that Jennie had a single good trait--unless it was good nature. For she was always ready with a laugh, no matter what anybody said to her.
It was seldom that Mrs. Ladybug hesitated to speak her mind right out to a person if she happened to disapprove of him. But she had always kept out of Jennie Junebug's way. Jennie was many times bigger than little Mrs. Ladybug. Mrs. Ladybug trembled to think what might happen to her if Jennie should ever hurl her fat body against Mrs. Ladybug with a dull, sickening thud.
"If that ever happens," Mrs. Ladybug thought, "I fear I'll never be able to do another day's work for Farmer Green. It might be the end of me."
Now, in spite of her fears, Mrs. Ladybug had even more than her share of courage. And as time went on, and she saw the awful havoc that Jennie Junebug played with the trees, Mrs. Ladybug reached the point where she couldn't any longer stand by silently and let Jennie Junebug riddle the leaves. "Something will have to be done!" Mrs. Ladybug declared to her friends. "I can't compel Jennie Junebug to stop. She's too big for me to handle.
"I'm going to have a talk with her," said Mrs. Ladybug.