Oh, how she was going to scold him now! For this time he had really been naughty. He had gathered no driftwood, he was late to supper, and he had ripped the patch off the seat of his trousers!
“I don’t dare take you home, Little Dipper,” he said as he placed his boat in the safest harbor, as far as possible from the incoming tide. “My great-aunt would burn you in the kitchen stove. Goodby, Little Dipper!”
His great-aunt met him at the door as he came home. She was so angry that her cap had slid over one ear, her eyes were like tiny hot coals and her very apron-strings curled with wrath. She boxed Birdling’s ears, smack, smack, smack!—until they were as pink as seashells.
“You, you, you,” she cried, “You shall have no supper, sir, but a very good whipping! Go up on the hill behind the house and cut a switch, a strong one, a long one, for a long strong whipping, sir!”
Obediently Birdling went up to the hill where the witch-hazel bushes held out their long, strong boughs to be cut for switches. But somehow he could not find just the switch he wanted; one was not long enough and another was too long, or one would not be strong enough and the next too strong. He looked them all over very carefully.
The witch-hazel bushes were in blossom, there were fuzzy little yellow stars on their boughs; Birdling saw a bumble-bee (who should have been in bed an hour ago) darting from bush to bush and tasting the little flowers. Then the boy remembered that he was to have no supper to-night, and as he felt dreadfully hungry, he touched one of the yellow blossoms and licked his finger that was covered with fine golden pollen, just to see what it tasted like.
Behold what happened to Birdling! He did not know that the witch-hazel flowers were full of Fairy Bread! Suddenly he grew smaller and smaller, like a candle on a birthday-cake, till he thought he must go out altogether—but just before it was time to go out he stopped shrinking and saw to his great relief that he was still a good inch taller than the bumble-bee.
He sat down with surprise, hands on the ground and feet apart, and the short grasses closed above his head. All around him the daisies, who always enjoy a joke, were tittering and looking at him through the grass. Somewhere behind a huge fuzzy mullen-plant was a great noise, like the motor of an aeroplane—it was the bumble-bee, coming to see what was going on.