"I know I'm a sight to behold, fellows," whimpered Lub. "I guess I deserve all I got, too, for being such a fool. But how was I to know that old hornets' nest almost lying on the ground under the bush was loaded!"
"What did you take it for?" asked Phil.
"Why," replied Lub, "I supposed it was a regular giant puff-ball, one of the toad-stool kind that go off with a crack and a puff of smoke when you kick 'em."
"Then you actually kicked it?" cried Phil.
"Just what I did—oh! murder!" gasped Lub, feeling of his enlarged head in dismay.
"And it went off, all right, I bet you?" asserted Ethan, uproariously.
"A million of 'em came hustling out and started to eating me up," Lub went on to explain, plaintively. "I killed 'em in droves, but there was always a fresh lot. Then I ran—you saw how I had to carry on. Guess it wasn't any laughing matter to me! And it isn't right now. If I keep on swelling like I am I'll bust. Talk to me about having the big head—bein' President of the United States wouldn't make my cranium swell any more. Phil, ain't you going to do something for a chum that's had trouble?"
"Sure, I am," announced Phil, readily. "Ethan, find some mud, and let it be clay if you can. Hurry and get it here. While you're doing it I'll take the sting out with ammonia. It's lucky I thought to fetch some along."
Lub only too willingly put himself wholly in the hands of his friends. The ammonia smarted at first, but by degrees the pain began to disappear, as the poison was neutralized by the remedy.
"I have to be careful not to let a drop of it get in your eyes, because it would smart terribly," Phil told the patient.