Nobody, I'd like you to know, _no_body has ever
doubted my word before."

Maya was terribly put out. She couldn't understand what had
upset the daddy-long-legs so, or what dreadful thing she had
done.

"It isn't altogether easy to get along with strangers," she
thought. "They don't think the way we do and don't see that we
mean no harm." She was depressed and cast a troubled look at the
spider with his long legs and soured expression.

"Really, someone ought to come and eat you up."

Hannibal had evidently mistaken Maya's good nature for weakness.
For now something unusual happened to the little bee. Suddenly
her depression passed and gave way, not to alarm or timidity,
but to a calm courage. She straightened up, lifted her lovely,
transparent wings, uttered her high clear buzz, and said with a
gleam in her eyes:

"I am a bee, Mr. Hannibal."

"I beg your pardon," said he, and without saying good-by turned
and ran down the tree-trunk as fast as a person can run who has
seven legs.

Maya had to laugh, willy-nilly. From down below Hannibal began
to scold.

"You're bad. You threaten helpless people, you threaten them with
your sting when you know they're handicapped by a misfortune and
can't get away fast. But your hour is coming, and when you're
in a tight place you'll think of me and be sorry." Hannibal
disappeared under the leaves of the coltsfoot on the ground.
His last words had not reached the little bee.

The wind had almost died away, and the day promised to be fine.
White clouds sailed aloft in a deep, deep blue, looking happy
and serene like good thoughts of the Lord. Maya was cheered. She
thought of the rich shaded meadows by the woods and of the sunny
slopes beyond the lake. A blithe activity must have begun there
by this time. In her mind she saw the slim grasses waving and
the purple iris that grew in the rills at the edge of the woods.
From the flower of an iris you could look across to the
mysterious night of the pine-forest and catch its cool breath of
melancholy. You knew that its forbidding silence, which
transformed the sunshine into a reddish half-light of sleep, was
the home of the fairy tale.

Maya was already flying. She had started off instinctively, in
answer to the call of the meadows and their gay carpeting of
flowers. It was a joy to be alive.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER X

THE WONDERS OF THE NIGHT

Thus the days and weeks of her young life pa