The Garnet Story Book: Tales of Cheer Both Old and New

by Unknown

They all set to work to get comfortable in their new quarters, and Butterwops, who liked to be near the fire, found a crack in the wall on top of the oven where they dried the wood. From this place of safety, he could come out and walk about among the warm wood and enjoy the heat, and yet run away on the first alarm.

“This is capital,” he said, as he sat warming himself and watching twenty-five beetles climbing into the sugar basin at once; “this is peace and quiet, and here we shall be very happy.”

As for the master of the old house they had lived in, he was very happy too, and wrote and told the man from whom he had bought the yellow powder: “Your powder has killed all the beetles in my house.” And the man who sold the powder printed that in all the newspapers, and other people bought it; but it did not kill all their beetles, and that made them angry. Now if they read this story they will know how it really happened.

Although, as I have said, the house itself was very old, and suitable for beetles in every respect, yet all the things in the house were new, and perhaps the newest thing of all was the young servant, who seemed rather jealous of the other new things and often broke them. At present they had no cat, and as there was no one else to blame, the new mistress scolded the new servant, and then they both cried; especially if it happened, as it often did, that what was broken was a wedding present. However, the mistress was far too happy to be angry for long, and too proud of all the beautiful pots and pans in the kitchen, which she loved better than any of the lovely furniture in the drawing-room, to keep away from them for many hours. Besides, the young servant did not know much about anything, and the mistress used to help her to cook, and especially to get the master’s tea ready when he came home. Indeed, in spite of the breakages, they were all very happy. The mistress used to go about the house singing brightly and cheerfully; while the young servant had four lumps of sugar in her tea and a large slice of cake with it every night, so that she was quite happy, although singing was out of the question. As for the master, you had only to see him running up the house steps to see how glad he was to get home again after his day’s work.

And dear old Butterwops! Why, it did his kind heart good to see so much happiness. The food was left about in easy places, and the larder door was always wide open so that you did not have to scrape your shell getting underneath it. It was a grand place for beetles, and Butterwops told them that if they kept quiet during the day and came out only at night, things would go well with them. Indeed, I have no doubt it would have been as he said, if they had only obeyed his instructions; but beetles, like children, sometimes forget to do what they are told.

Little Jimmy, for instance, was never happy unless he was frightening womenkind, and one afternoon three or four days after they had arrived, when the mistress and her servant were getting tea ready, he scuttled across the room, helter-skelter, right under their eyes. The girl saw him first and threw the toasting fork on to the best tea-things, breaking two cups and saucers with it; she bounded on to a chair, pulled her skirts tight round her legs and screamed out, “Beetles! Black ones.”

In a moment the mistress dropped the kettle, which nearly crushed little Jimmy, and jumped on to the table herself, screaming louder than the servant. Little Jimmy could hardly get under the skirting board, he was laughing so, and old Butterwops, looking out cautiously from the wood pile grunted to himself, “Little Jimmy again,” for he knew who must have done it as soon as he heard the women screaming.

How long the two ladies might have stayed there screaming before they would have dared to step down on to the floor again I do not know, but the master of the house came in just then, and hearing the cause of the trouble laughed aloud and said. “If there are beetles, I will get a beetle trap.” And he did so.

That night he brought one into the kitchen, and before they went to bed he and his wife mixed up a dose of treacle and sugar and put it in the trap and left the trap on the floor. Butterwops was looking on all the time from out of the wood pile, and he laughed all down the back of his shell at them. He had seen that kind of beetle trap before. It was a box of wood, with sloping sides to walk up and a sort of inkstand in the middle, leading to the sugar and treacle. When you walk up the sides, you smelled the mixture and if you went to the edge of the glass inkstand, you stepped in and got drowned. There was no getting out of it.

That night Butterwops was very anxious about the other beetles, for he knew what duffers they were, so he got down right away and sat on the edge of the trap and told them all about it. As the master of the house had been foolish enough to leave the sugar and treacle on the table, no one bothered about the trap. They had a merry feast, only spoilt by one giddy young beetle tumbling head first into the treacle pot, and there the master found him when he came down to light the fire. When he found nothing in the trap, and the dead beetle in the treacle pot on the table, he seemed very angry and threw both treacle and trap out of the scullery window, across the garden into the ashpit.