Then, very carefully, Johnnie set Chirpy Cricket on the ground, with both his hands cupped closely over him, so he couldn’t jump away.
“Now, fiddle!” Johnnie Green cried. “Fiddle just once and I’ll let you go.”
Though Johnnie Green waited patiently for what seemed to him a long time, he heard nothing that sounded the least bit like fiddling. So at last he peeped between two fingers to see what the fiddler was doing. But Johnnie Green couldn’t see him. Little by little he lifted his hands. And to his great surprise there was nothing under them but grass—and beneath the grass a crack in the earth.
“Well! You’re a sly one!” Johnnie Green exclaimed. “You’ve crawled into that crack. And you may stay there, too, for all I care.” Johnnie jumped to his feet and moved away. And not until he had been gone some time did Chirpy Cricket make a sound. Then he played a few notes on his fiddle, just to see that it hadn’t been harmed.
XI
A QUEER, NEW COUSIN
Chirpy Cricket was so fond of fiddling that sometimes he was the last of all the big Cricket family to stop making music and go home to bed. Now and then he lingered so long above the ground that the dawn caught him before he crept into his hole in the ground, beneath the straw. And one morning it was getting so light before he had played enough to suit him that he crawled into a crack in Farmer Green’s garden. It looked like a comfortable place to spend the day. And he thought it would be foolish for him to do much travelling at that hour, because there was no telling when an early bird might spy—and pounce upon—him.
He found his retreat quite to his liking. Nothing had happened to disturb his rest. And if he had only had time to carry a few blades of grass into the crack, to eat between naps, Chirpy would have had nothing to wish for.