When the wind blows the cradle will rock;
When the bough breaks the cradle will fall,
Down comes poor baby, cradle and all!”
How long Tom might have gone on tormenting the child no one can tell, if suddenly he had not been struck by the appearance of a curious bee, which had alighted for a moment upon a wild flower near.
“Oh, what a splendid bee!” he cried, leaving hold of the branch to which Johnny still clung. “Sit you there till I catch it. Isn’t it a beauty!—I never saw such fine purple wings!”
My reader has probably guessed that it was poor Violetta whose fatal beauty had attracted his eye. Johnny and his terrors all were forgotten, while Tom rushed forward in eager pursuit; the frightened child stopping his crying to watch the chase, which ended in Tom’s securing his prize in his handkerchief.
Impatient to carry it at once to a safe place, afraid of its either escaping or being crushed in his hold, Tom, whose cottage was so near that he could reach it in a few minutes, sprang over the hedge, and ran fast across the field. Thus Johnny was left in a position of some peril. Not knowing how long the boy’s absence might be, he shouted as loudly and as vainly after Tom as he before had done after his sister.
“And did you not return soon?” cried Minnie, as Tom reached this part of his story.
“How could I? Mother sent me off directly for the doctor.”
“Oh, why, why did you not tell her?”