"Oh, because," said he.
When the rest were all together in the tent they talked about him. "Do you suppose he's angry?" said one.
"What should he be angry about?" said another.
"I just believe he is," said a third. "Did you notice the way his hairs bristled?"
"Don't you think we ought to go to get him?" asked two or three of the youngest Caterpillars.
"No," said the older ones. "We haven't done anything. Let him get over it."
So the oldest brother, who had thought that every other Caterpillar in the tent would crawl right out and beg and coax him to come back, waited and waited and waited, but nobody came. The tent was there and the door was open. All he had to do was to crawl in and be at home. He waited so long that at last he had to leave the tree and spin his cocoon without ever having gone back to his brothers and sisters in the tent. He spun his cocoon and mixed the silk with a yellowish-white powder, then he lay down in it to sleep twenty-one days and grow his wings. The last thought he had before going to sleep was an unhappy and selfish one. Probably he awakened an unhappy and selfish Moth.
His brothers and sisters were sad whenever they thought of him. But, they said, "what could we do? It wasn't fair for him to have the best of everything, and we never answered when he said mean things. He might have come back at any time and we would have been kind to him."
And they were right. What could they have done? It was very sad, but when a Caterpillar is so selfish and sulky that he cannot live happily with other people, it is much better that he should live quite alone.