And of course none of the birds would believe him. He would have to spend the rest of his life explaining; and the others would only whistle, and call him Iagoo, the lying woodpecker. On the whole, it would be better for a bird with such a very unusual experience to keep still about it.
XII. A TEMPERANCE LESSON FOR THE HORNETS.
Last spring a hornet, one of those long brown double chaps that boys call mud-wasps, crept out of his mud shell at the top of my window casing, and buzzed in the sunshine till I opened the window and let him go. Perhaps he remembered his warm quarters, or told a companion; for when the last sunny days of October were come, there was a hornet, buzzing persistently at the same window till it opened and let him in.
It was a rather rickety old room, though sunny and very pleasant, which had been used as a study by generations of theological students. Moreover, it was considered clean all over, like a boy with his face washed, when the floor was swept; and no storm of general house cleaning ever disturbed its peace. So overhead, where the ceiling sagged from the walls, and in dusty chinks about doors and windows that no broom ever harried, a family of spiders, some mice, a daddy-long-legs, two crickets, and a bluebottle fly, besides the hornet, found snug quarters in their season, and a welcome.
The hornet stayed about, contentedly enough, for a week or more, crawling over the window panes till they were thoroughly explored, and occasionally taking a look through the scattered papers on the table. Once he sauntered up to the end of the penholder I was using, and stayed there, balancing himself, spreading his wings, and looking interested while the greater part of a letter was finished. Then he crawled down over my fingers till he wet his feet in the ink; whereupon he buzzed off in high dudgeon to dry them in the sun.
At first he was sociable enough, and peaceable as one could wish; but one night, when it was chilly, he stowed himself away to sleep under the pillow. When I laid my head upon it, he objected to the extra weight, and drove me ignominiously from my own bed. Another time he crawled into a handkerchief. When I picked it up to use it, after the light was out, he stung me on the nose, not understanding the situation. In whacking him off I broke one of his legs, and made his wings all awry. After that he would have nothing more to do with me, but kept to his own window as long as the fine weather lasted.
When the November storms came, he went up to a big crack in the window casing, whence he had emerged in the spring, and crept in, and went to sleep. It was pleasant there, and at noontime, on days when the sun shone, it streamed brightly into his doorway, waking him out of his winter sleep. As late as December he would come out occasionally at midday to walk about and spread his wings in the sun. Then a snow-storm came, and he disappeared for two weeks.
