THE Carpenter Bee, who lived in the big poplar by the brook, wasn’t building a house for Mrs. Ladybug.  That skillful woodworker hadn’t been able to agree with her ­so he told Buster Bumblebee.  Furthermore, he knew nothing of Mrs. Ladybug’s present plans as to where she was going to spend the winter.

Nor did anybody else.  It was all a great mystery.  And Mrs. Ladybug seemed to enjoy it far more than her neighbors did.  She was the only person that could have solved it for them.  And she wouldn’t.

At the same time she took delight in talking about her winter quarters, as she called the place where she intended to live during cold weather.

“It will be cozy and warm there,” she often remarked to her callers, of whom she had huge numbers.  For there was scarcely a person in the orchard or the garden that didn’t burn with curiosity to know more about the fine, big house into which Mrs. Ladybug expected to move.

“My winter quarters will be wind-proof,” Mrs. Ladybug told them.  And that speech set them all to guessing again.

Almost everybody said then that she was going to live underground.

“I shall not feel a drop of rain ­not even during the January thaw,” Mrs. Ladybug went on.

And then everybody had to begin guessing all over again; for rain drops were sure to trickle into an underground house during a warm spell.

“You’re going to live in a pumpkin!” cried Buster Bumblebee.

And all the neighbors ­even Mrs. Ladybug ­laughed when they heard that.

Buster knew of an old tune called “The Bumblebee in the Pumpkin,” and he cried with some heat that he could think of no reason why there shouldn’t be “A Ladybug in a Pumpkin.”

“I told you my house was big ­the biggest one on the farm,” Mrs. Ladybug reminded him.

“Ah!” Chirpy Cricket exclaimed.  “Now I know!  You’re going to live in the haystack.  A haystack is cozy and warm; it’s wind-proof; it sheds water; and there’s nothing bigger anywhere.”

It really seemed as if Chirpy Cricket had solved the great mystery.

“He’s guessed the riddle!” people said.  “You might as well admit now, Mrs. Ladybug, that you’re going to spend the winter in Farmer Green’s haystack.”

But Mrs. Ladybug dashed their hopes.

“You’re wrong,” she told her friends.  “And if to-night’s as nippy as last night was, perhaps you’ll find out to-morrow where I’m going.  For I don’t care to freeze my toes here in the orchard.”

That night it was colder than ever.  And the next day Mrs. Ladybug went all around the orchard and the garden bidding people good-by.

Still she wouldn’t tell where she was going.  And if Daddy Longlegs hadn’t happened to stroll around the cherry tree outside Farmer Green’s chamber window that afternoon, nobody would have known where Mrs. Ladybug went.  But Daddy Longlegs saw her.  And he hastened to spread the news.

“Mrs. Ladybug has gone to spend the winter in the farmhouse!”