eat leaves."

"Huh!" sniffed Mrs. Poe Tato-Bug, "I can't see that it's the same thing
at all. What good's a leaf to a Potato, now, just tell me that!"

"I only know this," replied Lady Bug, "last year Mrs. Cricket overheard
Farmer Hayseed say that if he could get rid of the Poe Tato-Bug family
he'd live twenty years longer. He said we ate up the leaves and made the
roots good for nothing. I presume he meant our family"

"For a quiet body you can say the meanest things," exclaimed Mrs. Poe
Tato-Bug. Just then Mrs. Cricket, head down, went hurrying by and said
as she passed,

"You'd better go home. Farmer Hayseed is pouring white stuff all over
your houses. Most of your folks have left, but I saw little Poe and Tato
still there."

"Dear me! O! O!" they both cried, "those children will be choked to
death!" No two mothers could have hurried home faster. Lady Bug tried to
give a little comfort on the way.

"I think," said she, "that Rose Bug will help the children, for all she
lives in such a beautiful new home. Rose is so fond of Poe and Tato; and
then, too, Bush Manor is not so far away."

Not one word did Mrs. Poe Tato-Bug say, but flying and jumping she
hurried home. Her red speckled wings kept cracking louder and louder as
she hurried along faster and faster.