“In quest of adventure,” Brent said, “we’ve all been stung once to-day following you and that’s enough. If you want to take it down lift it down carefully and pour the wasps out first. Then we can take a few kicks at it.”
Warde said, “It has kick enough in it, let it alone. It has too much of a kick in it for me.”
Then up jumped our young hero. “You don’t catch me doing any kicking,” he shouted.
“I’m glad to hear that; you’ve been kicking ever since we started,” I told him.
“Shall I knock it down and see what happens?” Hervey said. It was awful funny to see him lying there on his back and making believe to try and reach it with his foot. All the while the wasps were flying in and out of it and kind of hanging around the doorway.
By that time the girls were crazy, picking things up all excited and getting ready to move away. “Come away, don’t touch it; oh, don’t touch it whatever you do!” they were crying.
Marjorie Eaton knocked the lunch basket over and spilled everything out of it, she was in such a hurry. They both started picking things up and kept kind of edging away from the tree all the time. I had to laugh to see how they’d sneak up on tiptoe and pick up something and then go scooting away with it and sneak back for something else. The stuff was all over the ground, and they crept around groping for it all the while looking very scared-like at the tree.
Hervey didn’t pay any attention to them, just lay there on his back looking up at the big nest. He said, “I tell you what let’s do; let’s take it down and see how far we can roll it.”
“A game of one o’ cat would be better,” Brent said, very sober. “The first one to knock a home run will get six jelly rolls to begin with. Only we’ll have to bat at it left-handed.”
“Oh, absolutely, most conclusively,” I said.