The parents of other boys stood on the post-office steps in great number, for it was near mail-time; and here you might have seen what varieties of human nature there are. For some were taken with the conviction that the attraction of the Bow Meadows to their children was all connected with the legs of grasshoppers; some suspected it only, and were uneasy; some refused to imagine such a thing, and were indignant. But they nearly all started for the Bow Meadows with a vague idea of doing something, Mr. Atherton Bell and Father Durfey leading. It was not a well-planned expedition, nor did any one know what was intended to be done. They halted at the bars, but no Bobby Bell was in sight, nor did the Bow Meadows seem to have anything to say about the matter. The grasshoppers in sight had all the legs that rightly belonged to them. Mr. Atherton Bell got up on the wall and shouted for Bobby. Father Durfey climbed over the bars.
It happened that there was no one in the Bow Meadows at this time, except Bobby, Moses Durfey, Chub Leroy, and one other. Bobby was asleep, on account of the bumblebees humming in the sunlight; and the other three were far up the farther side, on account of an expedition through the alder swamp, supposing it to be Africa. There was a desperate battle somewhere; but the expedition turned out badly in the end, and in this place is neither here nor there. They heard Mr. Atherton Bell shouting, but they did not care about it. It is more to the point that Father Durfey, walking around in the grass, did not see the grasshopper who was tied to the mullein stalk and as mad as he could be. For when tied up in disgrace, one is always exceedingly mad at this point; but repentance comes afterwards. The grasshopper never got that far, for Father Durfey stepped on him with a boot as big as—big enough for Father Durfey to be comfortable in—so that the grasshopper was quite dead. It was to him as if a precipice were to fall on you, when you were thinking of something else. Then they all went away.
Bobby Bell woke up with a start, and was filled with remorse, remembering his grasshopper. The sun had slipped behind the shoulder of Windless Mountain. There was a faint light across the Bow Meadows, that made them sweet to look on, but a little ghostly. Also it was dark in the roots of the grasses, and difficult to find a green grasshopper who was dead; at least it would have been if he had not been tied to a mullein stalk. Bobby found him at last sunk deep in the turf, with his poor legs limp and crookless, and his head, which had been like a green cheese or a door knob, no longer looking even like the head of a grasshopper.
Then Bobby Bell sat down and wept. Miss Rachel, who had turned the corner and was half way up to the house of the Tuttle Four Women, heard him, and turned back to the bars. She wondered if Mr. Atherton Bell had not been too harsh. The Bow Meadows looked dim and mournful in the twilight. Miss Rachel was feeling a trifle sad about herself, too, as she sometimes did; and the round-cheeked cherub weeping in the wide shadowy meadows seemed to her something like her own life in the great world—not very well understood.
“He wath geen!” wailed Bobby, looking up at her, but not allowing his grief to be interrupted. “He wath my geen bug!”
Miss Rachel melted still further, without knowing why.
“What was green?”
She pulled down a bar and crawled through. She hoped Mr. Atherton Bell was not looking from a window, for it was difficult to avoid making one's self amusing to Mr. Atherton Bell. But Bobby was certainly in some kind of trouble.
“He'th dead!” wailed Bobby again. “He'th thtepped on!”
Miss Rachel bent over him stiffly. It was hard for one so austerely ladylike as Miss Rachel to seem gracious and compassionate, but she did pretty well.