Then Betsy's cousin nodded approvingly.
"Now you'd better hurry home," he told Mrs. Ladybug. "There's a rumor around the meadow that your house is on fire.[p. 34] And they say your children are in great danger."
Little Mrs. Ladybug at once fell to weeping.
"It's that horrid Freddie Firefly!" she shrieked. "I've told him to keep away from my home. I've told him that he would set it to blazing with that light of his. But he's forever sneaking around my house as soon as my back is turned."
"There, there! Don't be frightened!" Betsy Butterfly said to her soothingly. "It's only a rumor, you know."
"That's so," Mrs. Ladybug admitted, drying her eyes. "I hear it almost every day, too. But I never can get used to it.... I suppose this is only a false alarm, after all."
"I wouldn't be so sure about that," Butterfly Bill said wickedly, with a shake of his head. "And if I were you I'd look[p. 35] after my own family a little more carefully, instead of troubling myself with other people's affairs."
Several of Bill's friends applauded his speech. But Betsy Butterfly whispered to him to hush.
"Don't you see that Mrs. Ladybug is not quite herself?" she asked him.
But Butterfly Bill was not a person to be easily silenced like that.