SOMEHOW Mrs. Ladybug’s friends missed her.  The orchard seemed quite a different place after she vanished inside the farmhouse to stay there all winter long.  In spite of her sharp tongue and her prying ways people discovered ­now that she was gone ­that they had liked Mrs. Ladybug more than they knew.

While she was with them in the orchard they had often wished she wouldn’t ask so many questions.  But now the days seemed very long without Mrs. Ladybug to inquire how and why and when and where.

And then ­then a rumor flashed from lip to lip all the way across the garden and the orchard and the meadow:  “Mrs. Ladybug is back again!  She didn’t stay in the farmhouse a week.”

And sure enough! the rumor proved to be true.  Mrs. Ladybug, looking rather foolish, appeared in her old haunts among the apple trees.  She acted as if something had occurred to upset her.  And though she seemed glad to be greeted by all her old companions, she didn’t want them to ask her a single question as to why she hadn’t spent the whole winter, instead of only a few days of early fall, in Farmer Green’s house.

If she thought her neighbors weren’t going to question her she was sadly mistaken.

Only a little while before they had asked her a thousand and one questions about where she was going to live during the winter.  And now they were all just as curious to know why she had returned.  But this time they asked her a thousand and two questions.

You couldn’t say that her answers weren’t satisfying, because she didn’t make any answers at all.

Of course, things couldn’t go on like that forever.  People had to know what had changed Mrs. Ladybug’s plans.  And in order to persuade the stubborn lady to explain matters, a few of her friends hinted that they expected they would have to go to Farmer Green himself and learn the truth.

“You may ask him if you wish,” Mrs. Ladybug told them.  “But it won’t do you any good.  He can’t tell you what happened because he doesn’t know himself.”

“Maybe the farmhouse was cold,” Chirpy Cricket suggested.

Mrs. Ladybug made no comment on that remark.

“Perhaps the roof leaked,” said Daddy Longlegs.

Still no sign from Mrs. Ladybug.

“She found that the farmhouse wasn’t wind-proof,” said Daddy Longlegs’ wife.

And Mrs. Ladybug didn’t deny it; nor did she say that that was so.

Then Buster Bumblebee made one of his blundering speeches.

“It was a short winter, anyhow,” he said.

Mrs. Ladybug’s neighbors couldn’t help tittering.  And somehow their amusement stung her into telling the truth about the whole affair, right then and there.

“Mrs. Green and I didn’t get on well together,” she confessed.