Mr. Tumble-bug sighed heavily and said he thought he would go for a walk with some of his friends that afternoon. "All work and no play would make me a dull Bug," said he. Then he called out "Good-by" to his wife, and told her not to work too hard.
Mrs. Tumble-bug looked after him lovingly. "Now, isn't he good?" she said to herself. "There are not many Bugs who will help their wives at all, and most of them never look at an egg, much less see to getting it well placed." And that is true, for the Tumble-bugs are the model Bug fathers.
Now, indeed, Mrs. Tumble-bug was at her best. She hurried down her dinner, taking mouthfuls which were much too large for good manners, and began plowing the earth around the ball as it lay there. She plowed so deep that sometimes she was almost buried in the loose earth. At last she came up, took a good look around, knocked some grains of dust off her shining back, then dived in again upside down, and pulled the ball in after her by holding it tightly with her middle legs. All the time she was kicking the earth away with her two hind legs and her two front ones, which were stout diggers, so that little by little she sank deeper into the ground.
She made a much larger hole for the ball than it really needed. "I might just as well, while I am about it," she said. "And I should so dislike to have any one think me afraid of work."
At last she finished and crawled away, covering the place neatly over, so that nobody could see where she went in or out. "There!" she said. "Now I am ready to play."
A stray Chicken came along and she hurried under a chip to be safe. The Chicken was lost and calling to his mother. "Mother!" he cried. "Mother Hen, I want to get home and go to sleep under your wings."
"Dear me!" exclaimed Mrs. Tumble-bug. "Is it time for Chickens to go to sleep?" She looked through a crack in the fence and across the lawn to the big house. The shadows lay long upon the short grass. "It certainly is," she said. "And here I have spent all day burying that egg properly. I think it very strange that I cannot get more time for rest and play." So she had to eat her supper and go straight to bed to get rested for the next day's work.
Mrs. Tumble-bug did not understand then, and perhaps never will learn, that if she would stop doing things in the hardest way and begin doing them in the easiest way, she might get a great deal of work done in a day and still have time to rest. If one were to tell her so, she might think that meant laziness, but it would not, you know. It is always worth while to make one's head save one's feet, and when a single head could save six feet it would certainly be worth while. Still, although Mrs. Tumble-bug never dreamed of such a thing, she probably enjoyed work about as much as her neighbors enjoyed play.