Betty said:  “My, Mr. Bombus, how warm you are!  Sit right down on the grass and cool off before we go any farther, please.”

“Oh, dear, no!” objected her companion.  “That would be terribly imprudent, with these cold autumn winds blowing so; and winter just over there.  I ’d catch my death, Child.”

“Why, I ’m sure,” replied Betty, “I don’t know what you mean.  It’s as summer as it can be.  It’s a hot August day, and if you can’t sit outdoors in August, I ’d like to know when you can.”

“Allow me to inform you, my dear child, that it isn’t August at all; and if you had half an eye you ’d see it, let alone feel it.  Do these leaves look as if it were August?” and he pointed to a clump of trees whose foliage shone red and yellow in the sunlight.

Betty started.  “Good gracious!” she exclaimed.  “How came they to change so early?”

“It is n’t early,” explained Mr. Bombus.  “It’s the last of October,—­even later,—­and keeps getting more so every minute.”

“But,” insisted Betty, “it was August when I first saw you, a few hours ago, and—­”

“Yes, then it was August,” assented Mr. Bombus; “but we ’ve got beyond that.  We ’re in By-and-by.  Did n’t you hear your mother say it would be October by and by, and it is October.  Time is jogging on, back there in the world; but we beat him, you see, and are safe and sound—­far ahead of him—­in By-and-by.  Things are being done here that are always going to be done behind there.  It’s great fun.”

But at these words Betty’s face grew very grave, and a sudden thought struck her that was anything but “great fun.”  Would she be set to doing all the things she had promised to do “by and by”?

“I ’m afraid so,” said Mr. Bombus, replying to her question though she had only thought it.  “I told you it depended on one’s self if one were going to like By-and-by or not.  Evidently you ’re not.  Oh! going so soon?  You must have been a lazy little girl to be set about settling your account as quick as this.  See you later!  Good—­”

But again he was not permitted to say “by,” for before he could fairly get the word out, Betty was whisked away, and Mr. Bombus stood solitary and alone under a bare maple-tree, chuckling to himself in an amused fashion and, it must be confessed, in a spiteful.

“It ’ll be a good lesson for her.  She deserves it,” he said to himself; and Betty seemed to hear him, though she was by this time far away.

Poor child! she did not know where she was going nor what would take place next, and was pretty well frightened at feeling herself powerless to do anything against the unknown force that was driving her on.