he reached the base, where it was thicker and stronger, and he was able to turn himself over on it.
He heaved a tremendous sigh of relief.
“Good God!” he exclaimed. “That was awful. But for my presence of mind I should have fallen a victim to your talkativeness.”
“Are you feeling better?” asked Maya.
Bobbie clutched his forehead.
“Thanks, thanks. When this dizziness passes, I’ll tell you all about it.”
But Maya never got the answer to her question. A field-sparrow came hopping through the grass in search of insects, and the little bee pressed herself close to the ground and kept very quiet until the bird had gone. When she looked around for Bobbie he had disappeared. So she too made off; for the rain had stopped and the day was clear and warm.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER V
THE ACROBAT
Oh, what a day!
The dew had fallen early in the morning, and when the sun rose and cast its slanting beams across the forest of grass, there was such a sparkling and glistening and gleaming that you didn’t know what to say or do for sheer ecstasy, it was so beautiful, so beautiful!
The moment Maya awoke, glad sounds greeted her from all round. Some came out of the trees, from the throats of the birds, the dreaded creatures who could yet produce such exquisite song; other happy calls came out of the air, from flying insects, or out of the grass and the bushes, from bugs and flies, big ones and little ones.
Maya had made it very comfortable for herself in a hole in a tree. It was safe and dry, and stayed warm the greater part of the night because the sun shone on the entrance all day long. Once, early in the morning, she had heard a woodpecker rat-a-tat-tatting on the bark of the trunk, and had lost no time getting away. The drumming of a woodpecker is as terrifying to a little insect in the bark of a tree as the breaking open of our shutters by a burglar would be to us. But at night she was safe in her lofty nook. At night no creatures came prying.
She had sealed up part of the entrance wit