As for the Carpenter, everybody quite forgot about him. Johnnie and the twins were too busy putting mud poultices on their wounds, to ease their aches and pains, to think of the prisoner they had left on the farmhouse porch. It was not until the next day that Johnnie Green remembered his new pet. And when he went to see him then the honey box was empty. The Carpenter had cut a tunnel through the wall of his prison.
Later the Carpenter sent a message to Buster, by little Mrs. Ladybug.
"The Carpenter has lost so much time," she told Buster, "that he thinks he will never be able to finish the addition to his house. So he says you'll have to get somebody else to build your new home for you."
At first Buster was disappointed. But he soon recovered his good spirits.
"After all, it's just as well," he remarked cheerfully. "I know where there's a fine new house right in the clover patch. And I'll move into it at once."
Of course he meant the honey box which the boy had dropped upon the rock and forgotten. So Buster had his new home without the help of the Carpenter. And all his friends agreed that the house-warming he gave was the most successful that ever was known in those parts. It took place on the hottest day of the summer. And Buster's house was so warm that three of his guests almost had sunstrokes—and had to be helped home.
XVII
BUSTER LEARNS OF THE RAISING BEE
"Yes!" said Jimmy Rabbit. "I hear that there's going to be a raising bee at Farmer Green's place to-morrow. And if I were you I should certainly want to be there."