“Without going away from here!”
“Without hiding in the ground?”
“Without hiding in the ground!”
“I give up!” said the snake. “Disappear! But if you don’t do as you say, I eat you, gobble, gobble, just like that!”
Now you must know that while the top was spinning round and round, the little bee had noticed something on the floor of the hollow tree she had not seen before: it was a little shrub, three or four inches high, with leaves about the size of a fifty-cent piece. She now walked over to the stem of this little shrub, taking care, however, not to touch it with her body. Then she said:
“Now it is my turn, Mr. Snake. Won’t you be so kind as to turn around, and count ‘one,’ ‘two,’ ‘three.’ At the word ‘three,’ you can look for me everywhere! I simply won’t be around!”
The snake looked the other way and ran off a “onetathree,” then turning around with his mouth wide open to have his dinner at last. You see, he counted so fast just to give the bee as little time as possible, under the contract they had made.
But if he opened his mouth wide for his dinner, he held it open in complete surprise. There was no bee to be found anywhere! He looked on the floor. He looked on the sides of the hollow tree. He looked in each nook and cranny. He looked the little shrub all over. Nothing! The bee had simply disappeared!
Now, the snake understood that if his trick of spinning the top with his tail was extraordinary, this trick of the bee was almost miraculous. Where had that good-for-nothing lazybones gone to? Here? No! There? No! Where then? Nowhere! There was no way to find the little bee!
“Well,” said the snake at last, “I give up! Where are you?”