Ant ventures

When Anthony Ant had come back with his shoes and stockings, he first washed himself carefully at the brook, and combed his hair, and brushed his teeth with the nice Marsh-Mint Dental Cream his mother had put into his case for him. The Ladybug and the small Spider, Size Two sat near by watching him and praising the pretty and the nice-smelling toilet articles his mother had put in for him. The Ladybug wrote down the name of his soap in her notebook so she could get some at the first large field drug store she came to. The soap was called Meadow-Scent Soap. The paper it was wrapped in said the soap was the best for the skin and made a good lather even in the coldest and hardest spring water.

“I am more than ever sure, Mr. Ant,” said she, “that if you had not told me you never had been to college I never should have known it. Any one with such good manners as yours, and also such fancy toilet articles, could easily make any one think he had been through the most noted college in the world.”

“You are most kind,” said the Ant. “I can see now that it paid when Mother made me take pains with my washing and dressing, though I used to cry so hard when she was teaching me, and I hated to have my ears washed and squealed like a good fellow.”

“Or a bad fellow, maybe you meant,” suggested the small Spider, Size Two.

“You are right,” the Ant answered. “But I am taking a lot of pains now, for since you have invited me to your birthday party I must look as clean as I can.”

At last his last shoe was on and tied neatly, and he had flicked the dust from the shoes as well as he could with a little tuft of grass he used as a whisk broom, and off the party started. The small Spider, Size Two asked to be allowed to carry the lunch basket for luck. The Ant let him do it, as the small Spider, Size Two really seemed to want to. The three soon found a good place to wait for some floating thing coming downstream they might use for a boat.

It was not long before a fine large piece of wood—a clean flat chip from a tree—came sailing down. It was white and freshly cut from some tree a woodcutter was chopping down in the woods somewhere.

“Oh!” cried the Ladybug. “What a lovely excursion boat! The decks must have been newly scrubbed and the whole thing painted white on purpose for our birthday celebration. It is going to stop, too. See, it is coming straight to the shore right here!”

Sure enough! Any one could see that. It came as though by a sort of magic trick, for the fresh chip sailed as straight toward them as though it had been alive and they had called to it. In fact, Anthony Ant had called to it in his excitement, “Hey, there! Chip, ahoy!”

Even in his excitement he had thought it more suitable to say, “Chip, ahoy!” than “Ship, ahoy!” you see.

The current brought it to the shore in this quiet pool, though the chip was so large that the end of it still reached the edge of the current and the little boat bobbled a bit—if there is such a word as bobble, and if there isn’t there ought to be, for that is what the boat did anyway. Before the Ant could help the Ladybug aboard politely, as he intended to do, she had flown aboard herself, so eager was she to try that snowy-white deck. So the Ant and the small Spider, Size Two tossed the little dressing case and the lunch box on to the boat and then made quick jumps themselves. They were not a second too soon, either, for the current was coaxing the little chip back again to do more than just bobble idly at the edge of the pool. Off it went to the center of the brook as the current told it to, and the fun really began.

“I wish we could sail all day like this,” said the Ladybug with a deep sigh. “It is the best boat I ever have tried, and I have tried a great many different kinds. It smells so nice too, the wood is so sweet. And to be on the water a day like this is a dream of happiness.”

“Well,” said the small Spider, Size Two, “why can’t we come aboard it again, and sail downstream after the party? I almost feel it in my bones that this boat will wait for us till then, and the things I feel in my bones always come true. Even in the matter of the making of a new web house, I go by the feeling in my bones. When I start to plan the house, if the feeling in my bones tells me the place I have chosen for the house is not the right one, I never build there. I start another house; and if the feeling in my bones tells me I am right, I know I am, and I just build the house right off. The feeling in my bones never has failed to tell me the truth. So, as it now tells me we can take this trip after the party, I believe we can.”

The Ladybug clapped her wings up and down for joy at that, and Anthony Ant felt that Dr. Alexander Beetle Bug knew how to write prescriptions. There surely could not be anything better for any one than a change.

Well, sir, the next stop of the chip came sooner than they expected. A little sudden breeze from the side sent them up against a huge water-soaked log that must have lain in the brook for years. The current, acting with the breeze at the same time, made the chip dart suddenly up back of this log where the water was so still that the little boat did not bobble at all, but lay quiet on the surface close to the log.

“There, sir!” exclaimed the small Spider, Size Two. “The feeling in my bones must be true, for the boat is safe enough in this harbor for one while. There’s no danger of anything but a strong breeze from this side taking it away again, and as the wind is the other way we have nothing to worry about.”

They crawled up the log to the top. The Ladybug could have flown across the brook as well as not, of course, instead of having to wait for a boat to help her part way over. But often she chose to travel as the Bugs that cannot fly travel; and, as she was making this trip with these two that could not fly, she stayed with them.

It was a long trip to the Wild-Rose Tea House from that landing place, but they made it in short time. Soon they were seated, as cosy as you please, about a green leaf table with an extra leaf put in so they would not be crowded, and they had the daintiest birthday-special luncheon, as it was called, served to them by the Rosebug waiter. The dishes were shaped like wild roses, and there was a bit of rose flavor in nearly all the food that was served. Sandwiches of rose petals were cut into rose shape. Instead of lettuce, rose leaves were used shredded into ribbons, and the salad, made of wild berries and woods small fruits, was arranged on the leaf ribbons. When the ice cream came, it was found to be pink and in the form of roses. Even the Ladybug, who had been there before, had to say, “Oh!” it was so delicious. There was a birthday cake too, with candles of pink, and the candles gave out rose scent while burning. This was no common cafeteria meal.

Then came a surprise Ant Venture for the Ant. At a sign from the small Spider, Size Two, the waiter placed Anthony’s lunch basket before Anthony and raised the cover. Inside, in the most delicate pink Japanese napkins of rose pattern, was enough of each thing served at the Wild-Rose Tea House to last Anthony for several meals. A card tied to the handle with pink ribbon said:

For a Perfect Gentleman
With the Compliments of
Dot-ty Ladybug
and
Web-ster Spider

Oh, my, my, my! Such a glow went all through Anthony Ant that he felt as pink as the pinkest rose that ever blossomed on that bush. And to think that all this joy had come to him because he had not said the cross words he nearly said when he found these friends meddling with his basket! Why, he was beginning to have a feeling in his bones, too, and the feeling in his bones told him that all that Mother Antoinette Ant ever had told him about being kind and calm and speaking gently was perfectly true!