"I wish he was here now!" one of the honey-makers exclaimed fiercely.
"I'd make it hot for him!"
Usually the honey-makers began to grow very drowsy at that time of day (it was then late in the afternoon). But now they were so angry that they were not the least bit sleepy. Their own buzzing kept them awake. And the Queen was glad that it was so, because she herself never could have stopped so many of them from going to sleep. And even then, if the truth must be known, the Queen wished that she might go to bed. Never in all her life had she been up so late before.
"I wish the Fireflies would hurry!" she exclaimed as she stood at the front-door of her house and looked across the fast darkening field.
As she watched anxiously, the Queen soon spied a light, which kept growing brighter and brighter, until at last Freddie Firefly dropped down before her. He took off his cap and made a low bow.
"Here I am, Queen!" he said.
"Where's the rest of your family?" Buster Bumblebee's mother asked him.
"They all had to go to a dance down by the swamp," Freddie Firefly explained. "They wanted me to go with them; but I had promised your son that I'd be here at dusk. And of course I wouldn't think of breaking my promise."
Well, the Queen was terribly disappointed.
"You never can furnish enough light for my forty-nine workers!" she cried.
"Perhaps not!" Freddie admitted. "But I'd be glad to take one of them to the clover-patch to-night, just as a trial, you know."