Both twins grabbed at the same time. They both shrieked at the same time,
too--for each of them felt a sharp pain, as if a red-hot needle had been
run into his finger. And Buster Bumblebee felt himself falling. Then
followed a crash of splintering glass. And in another moment Buster was
hurrying away across the clover field.

When he was stung by the worker he had seized, Buster's twin had dropped
the honey box. And it had fallen squarely upon a rock and broken.

If Buster had not been in such haste to escape he would have heard still
another shout. For the news spread like wildfire among the workers--the
news that an army of boys had attacked them. And a terrible-tempered
relation of Buster's known as Peppery Polly darted at Johnnie Green and
buried her sting deep in the back of that young gentleman's sun-browned
neck.

As for the Carpenter, everybody quite forgot about him. Johnnie and the
twins were too busy putting mud poultices on their wounds, to ease their
aches and pains, to think of the prisoner they had left on the farmhouse
porch. It was not until the next day that Johnnie Green remembered his
new pet. And when he went to see him then the honey box was empty. The
Carpenter had cut a tunnel through the wall of his prison.

Later the Carpenter sent a message to Buster, by little Mrs. Ladybug.

"The Carpenter has lost so much time," she told Buster, "that he thinks
he will never be able to finish the addition to his house. So he says
you'll have to get somebody else to build your new home for you."