in different directions, the white
butterfly rocking silently as if wafted by the gentle wind,
little Maya with that uneasy zoom-zoom of the bees which we hear
upon the flowers on fair days and which we always recall when we
think of the summer.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER IX

THE LOST LEG

Near the hole where Maya had set herself up for the summer lived
a family of bark-boring beetles. Fridolin, the father, was an
earnest, industrious man who wanted many children and took
immense pains to bring up a large family. He had done very well:
he had fifty energetic sons to fill him with pride and high
hopes. Each had dug his own meandering little tunnel in the bark
of the pine-tree and all were getting on and were comfortably
settled.

"My wife," Fridolin said to Maya, after they had known each
other some time, "has arranged things so that none of my sons
interferes with the others. They are not even acquainted; each
goes his own way."

Maya knew that human beings were none too fond of Fridolin and
his people, though she herself liked him and liked his opinions
and had found no reason to avoid him. In the morning before the
sun arose and the woods were still asleep, she would hear his
fine tapping and boring. It sounded like a delicate trickling,
or as if the tree were breathing in its sleep. Later she would
see the thin brown dust that he had emptied out of his corridor.

Once he came at an early hour, as he often did, to wish her
good-morning and ask if she had slept well.

"Not flying to-day?" he inquired.

"No, it's too windy."

It was windy. The wind rushed and roared and flung the branches
into a mad tumult. The leaves looked ready to fly away. After
each great gust the sky would brighten, and in the pale light
the trees seemed balder. The pine in which Maya and Fridolin
lived shrieked with the voices of the wind as in a fury of anger
and excitement.

Fridolin sighed.

"I worked all night," he told Maya, "all night. But what can you
do? You've got to do _some_thing to get _some_where. And I'm not
altogether satisfied with this pine; I should have tackled a
fir-tree." He wiped his brow and smiled in self-pity.

"How are your children?" asked Maya pleasantly.

"Thank you," said Fridolin, "thank you for your interest.
But"--he hesitated--"but I don't supervise the way I used to.
Still, I have reason to believe they are all doing well."

As he sat there, a little brown m