"A hornets' nest!" shouted Mow, who had walked on ahead of Kitty. "Come on, boys!"
"Stop," said Ham; "let's tie Kitty safely first."
So we led her to the shade of some trees on the edge of a piece of woods, where she would be safe from the hornets, and tied her fast; then off we went, full tilt, after Mow. He was staring up into a hollow tree, where we could just see the hornets' nest, looking like a brown-paper parcel full of holes—and a big fat one it was.
"There's millions in it," said he, as we came up; but he didn't mean money, only hornets.
This pleased us very much; not that we were exactly fond of hornets, but it made it more exciting. No matter what a boy is doing, he always has to go for a hornets' nest when he sees it; and we never thought about being warm or anything else, but just to send those hornets flying. We could see a few of them crawling in and out, and hanging round their paper house, and we meant to give them a hint that they'd been living in that hollow tree about long enough.
The tree was quite low, and we got long sticks and went at them. We had a lively time of it. The hornets came swarming out at us like ten thousand red-hot locomotives, burning us everywhere at once, for they stung us like fun; and we ran for dear life, and then came back and hacked away at them, our faces blazing with heat, and perspiration oozing from every pore. We took off our jackets at the beginning of the fray, or there would not have been much of them left, for the hornets were as mad as they could be, and so were we.
We kept it up for hours, never thinking how hot we were, or that it was time to be hungry, and we got that nest pretty well demolished. When the hornets were nearly gone, and there wasn't much of the nest to be seen, three tired boys limped off rather lamely to Kitty's cool bower, and throwing themselves down on the ground, fell fast asleep.
When they awoke, each looked at the other in great amazement. Ham's upper lip was puffed 'way out, and one eye closed; Mow's nose looked like a large pink potato: while as for me, the hornets seemed to have attacked every feature I had. The lengthening shadows warned us that it was supper-time, and with a puzzled feeling about our visit at the Davises', we turned our highly ornamented faces homeward.
"What has happened?" cried grandma, as we came within sight of the family gathered on the porch. "Do look at these boys!"
Of course every one looked at us; and as soon as they had settled what was the matter, they made us look ten times worse than ever by daubing our faces with mud.