"I dare do it," I said. I was as bold as a lion.
I did it, though. I caught the bumble-bee, and held him fast in my hand. But if ever a poor fellow got handsomely and foolishly stung, I was that unfortunate youth; and the worst of it was, that while I was dancing about, and wringing my hand, and crying, on account of the pain, my companions were doing quite another thing: they were holding a laughing concert, at my expense.
It is hardly necessary to add, that my white-faced bumble-bee turned out to be an enemy in disguise. After that event, I made a closer examination of the faces of this class of insects, and became satisfied that there was one tribe of bumble-bees who wore a face of a pale yellow color, resembling somewhat the genuine borer, but who, for all that, could sting as well as any of their race with black faces.
This feat was as near as I ever got toward the glory of capturing a nest of bumble-bees. I have tasted the honey which came from their nests, though, many a time, and I have seen other boys capture the nests.
Billy Bolton was a great fellow at that kind of sport. Billy lived with Uncle Mike. He did _chores_--to use a word common enough in New England, though, possibly, not an elegant one--on Mr. Marble's farm; that is, he went for the cows and drove them to pasture, fed the pigs and poultry, brought water and chips for the "women folks," and ran of errands.
It was a favorite sport with Billy, in the summer time, to hunt for bumble-bees' nests, and to "take them up," as the process of capturing them was called. Uncle Mike did not like to indulge the boy in this kind of sport. Perhaps he thought it a cruel and unfeeling kind of fun; and I know he had too kind a heart, to see a boy growing up in his family with a taste for cruelty to animals of any kind. At any rate, the danger connected with the sport was enough to condemn it in the mind of Mr. Marble.
He had forbidden Billy and his own children having any thing to do with the sport. Still, it seemed Billy found means to amuse himself, now and then, in a sly way, by taking up a bumble-bees' nest.
One day, Mr. Marble and his men were engaged in the meadow, raking hay and carting it into the barn. Billy was in the meadow, too, at work among the hay, raking after the cart, I presume, as that used to be the task always allotted to me when I was of his age. In a corner of the lot, at some distance from the place where Mr. Marble and his men were at work, there was a large bottle containing water--nothing but water, reader; there was no rum drank on Mr. Marble's farm. Billy was sent after the bottle. He was gone a good while--longer, Mr. Marble thought, than was necessary. The matter was examined, when it turned out that Billy had got into trouble with a nest of bumble-bees. He had discovered a nest of these wretches, it appears; and, the temptation to wage war against them being very strong, he had stopped a moment, just to take up the nest.
