“Hum!” remarked Laddie. “That’s the first time I ever knew cows liked salt.” But later when he saw how horses in the pasture followed Adam North about when he went to “salt” them, and when the little boy watched the sheep eagerly licking the salt in their field, then he knew that his mother was right.
Happy days at Farmer Joel’s followed one after another. The six little Bunkers never had such delightful times. There seemed to be something new to do all the while. They roamed about the fields and woods, they gathered eggs, they fed the chickens, and sometimes they had picnics. They waded in the brook and, once or twice, fell in and got muddy. But this was expected.
One place that the children stayed away from was the part of the farm where Mr. Todd kept several hives of bees. The children knew that bees stung and they did not want this to happen to them.
About a week after the Bunkers had come to stay at Farmer Joel’s, Russ and Laddie were going to the brook to play with their water wheel when suddenly they heard a loud buzzing, humming sound in the air. At first they thought it was a distant aeroplane, but, looking up, they could see none. However, over in the direction of the bee orchard Russ saw a dark cloud in the air. The buzzing sound seemed to come from this dark cloud.
Then Russ knew what it was—a flight of bees.
“Oh, they’re running away!” he cried. “We must tell Farmer Joel!”
He and Laddie hastened toward the house and told the news. Mr. Todd ran out. As soon as he heard the buzzing sound and saw the moving dark cloud he cried:
“They’re swarming! I don’t want to lose them! I must try to get them back!” Into the house he hurried, to come out with a queer, smoking machine in his hand. Over his head Farmer Joel wore a broad-brimmed straw hat with a veil of mosquito netting coming down over his shoulders.
CHAPTER XI
MUN BUN’S GARDEN
The six little Bunkers, never having been at Farmer Joel’s before and not knowing much about bees, did not understand just what was going to happen. In a general way the Bunker children knew that bees made honey, but how they did it, how the insects lived in hives, with a queen bee who ruled over her subjects almost like a real queen—of all this the six little Bunkers knew nothing.