“Now,” exclaimed Mrs. Tumble-bug, “We must get to work. Help me roll this ball of manure. I have laid an egg in it while we were talking, so that time was not wasted.”
Together they rolled a ball which was bigger than both of them when it started, and grew larger and larger as they got it away from the heap and the dust of the ground stuck to it and crusted it over.
Mrs. Tumble-bug stood on top of the ball, and, creeping far out on it, pulled it forward with her hind feet, while he stood on his head behind it and pushed with his hind legs. Of course if Mrs. Tumble-bug had not been climbing backward all the time, the ball would have rolled right over her. To pull forward with part of your legs and climb backward with all of them at the same time, and that when your head is a good deal lower than your heels, is pretty hard work and takes much planning. Mrs. Tumble-bug had very little breath for talking, but she did not lose her temper. And that shows what an excellent Bug she was. “Harder!” she would call out to Mr. Tumble-bug. “We are coming to a little hill.”
Then Mr. Tumble-bug, who, you will remember, had to stand on his head all the time, and really did the hardest part of the work, would brace himself more firmly and push until it seemed as though his legs would break. He could never see just where they were going unless he let go of the ball, and Mrs. Tumble-bug did not believe in turning out for anything.
“What if there is a hill?” she often said. “Can’t we go over it?” And over it they always went, although they might much more easily have gone around it. Mrs. Tumble-bug did not want anybody to think her afraid of work, and she knew her husband would have a chance to rest while she was burying the ball. Once in a while, when the ball came down suddenly on the farther side of a twig or chip, it rolled quite on top of her, and Mr. Tumble-bug would be greatly alarmed. Some people thought this served her quite right for insisting that they should go over things instead of around them. Still, one hardly likes to say a thing like that.
If it were much of a hill, she would climb down from the ball and talk with him. Then they would put their shovel-shaped heads together under the back side of the ball, and, pushing at the same time, send it over. “Two heads are better than one,” they would say, “and this needs a great deal of head-work.”
At last the ball had reached the spot where they intended to have it buried. Both were hot and tired. “Many legs make light work,” said Mrs. Tumble-bug, as she carefully cleaned hers before eating dinner, “and if there is anything I enjoy, it is finishing a good job like this!”
Mr. Tumble-bug sighed heavily and said he thought he would go for a walk with some of his friends that afternoon. “All work and no play would make me a dull Bug,” said he. Then he called out “Good-by” to his wife, and told her not to work too hard.
Mrs. Tumble-bug looked after him lovingly. “Now, isn’t he good?” she said to herself. “There are not many Bugs who will help their wives at all, and most of them never look at an egg, much less see to getting it well placed.” And that is true, for the Tumble-bugs are the model Bug fathers.
Now, indeed, Mrs. Tumble-bug was at her best. She hurried down her dinner, taking mouthfuls which were much too large for good manners, and began plowing the earth around the ball as it lay there. She plowed so deep that sometimes she was almost buried in the loose earth. At last she came up, took a good look around, knocked some grains of dust off her shining back, then dived in again upside down, and pulled the ball in after her by holding it tightly with her middle legs. All the time she was kicking the earth away with her two hind legs and her two front ones, which were stout diggers, so that little by little she sank deeper into the ground.