"It can be—it is true," he replied carelessly.
At last Mrs. Ladybug had to believe what she heard.
"Then you're a fraud!" she cried. '"You're a cheat! For I read on your carpetbag, when we met in the orchard, 'P. Bug. Colorado.'"
"Oh!" said Mr. Bug with a smile. "Oh! So that's where you got your odd notion. I wondered how you happened to make such a mistake."
"A perfectly natural mistake, I'm sure!" Mrs. Ladybug exclaimed indignantly.
"Well, I dare say it is," he admitted. "But you see, that's not my carpetbag. At least, I didn't get it new. It belonged to my great-great-great-grandfather. Indeed, I'm not sure he wasn't even still greater than I've said. He lived in Colorado once—so I've been told. But I was born and raised on this farm."
"If all this is true," said Mrs. Ladybug, "what were you doing with that carpetbag? And why did you ask me the way to this potato patch?"
"I'm in a hurry to get to work," Mr. Bug remarked. "I'll answer just this once. When we met in the orchard I had been away on a little vacation. And Farmer Green's potato patch—so I learned—had been moved since last year."
"Dear me!" Mrs. Ladybug wailed. "People will laugh at me for having made such a serious mistake."
But Mr. P. Bug didn't say anything about that.