Member-only story
AROUND THE WORLD FOR
Once upon a time, an Ant was sitting on a leaf to think. He was tired of working, and his mother had sent him out to hunt for a little green Worm to stow away in the larder, but he did not want to do even that.
“I never saw such a stupid world!” he said aloud. “All there is to do is to carry out the earth all day long or else go hunting for the family’s food, and I am tired of it all!”
“Ho!” said a voice near him. “All you want is a change. You think you’ve seen the world, but I’ll give you something that will cure you. I know your mother well, so you take her this[Pg 8] prescription I am writing. Give it to her with my compliments and tell her I said that it is all you need to make you the happiest Ant in the whole wide world.”
The Ant looked, and there sat a Beetle on the same leaf. He had on large, horn-rimmed spectacles and was writing busily on a physician’s prescription pad. Anyone could see he was a doctor. He handed the prescription to the Ant, took off the big spectacles, and said, “Now run along to your mother and show her this at once.”
The Ant took the prescription, thanked the Beetle, and ran down the stem of the leaf to the ground and back to Ant-Hill Manor, where he lived. He could not read a word of the prescription himself, for whoever could read a physician’s prescription, anyway? No one but the doctor himself and…
