"You're right!" said Uncle Andy, his voice suddenly growing very stern as a bee crawled over his collar and jabbed him with great earnestness in the neck. He sat up. Several other bees were creeping over him, seeking an effective spot to administer their fiery admonitions. But he paid them no heed. They stung him where they would--while he was quickly looking over the Babe's hair, jacket, sleeves, stockings, and loose little trousers. He killed half a dozen of the angry crawlers before they found a chance to do the Babe more damage. Then he pulled out three stings, and applied moist earth from under the moss to each red and anguished spot. The Babe looked up at him with a resolute little laugh, and shook obstinately from the tip of his nose the tears which he would not acknowledge by the attentions of his handkerchief or his fist. "Thank you _awfully_," he began politely. "But _oh_! Uncle Andy, your poor eye is just dreadful. Oh-h-h!" "Yes, they _have_ been getting after me a bit," agreed Uncle Andy, dealing firmly with his own assailants, now that the Babe was all right. "But this jab under the eye is the only one that matters. Here, see if you can get hold of the sting." The Babe's keen eyes and nimble little fingers captured it at once. Then Uncle Andy plastered the spot with a daub of wet, black earth, and peered over it solemnly at the Babe's swollen ear. He straightened his grizzled hair, and tried to look as if nothing out of the way had happened. "I wish I'd brought my pipe along," he muttered. "It's over there by the rock. But I reckon it wouldn't be healthy for me to go and get it just yet!" "What's made them so awful mad, do you suppose?" inquired the Babe, nursing his wounds and listening uneasily to the vicious hum which filled the air outside the thicket. "It's that fool bear!" replied Uncle Andy. "He's struck a bee tree too tough for him to tear open, and he fooled at it just long enough to get the bees good and savage. Then he quit in a hurry. And we'll just have to stay here till the bees get cooled down." "How long'll that be?" inquired the Babe dismally. It was hard to sit still in the hot fir thicket, with that burning, throbbing smart in his ear and two little points of fierce ache in his leg. Uncle Andy was far from happy himself; but he felt that the Babe, who had behaved very well, must have his mind diverted. He fished out a letter from his pocket, rolled himself, with his heavy pipe tobacco, a cigarette as thick as his finger, and fell to puffing such huge clouds as would discourage other bees from prying into the thicket. Then he remarked irrelevantly but consolingly: