“Very well!” Tommy answered. “It’s too cold for me to fiddle any more. So talk away! And you’d better be quick about it, for the night’s almost gone.”
But somehow Chirpy Cricket felt that his chat could wait a little longer. If the pale young person clinging to the raspberry bush near Tommy Tree Cricket loved music, he thought it was a pity to disappoint her.
“You may feel too cold to fiddle; but I don’t!” Chirpy said. “I’m quite warm down here on the ground. This little hollow where I’m sitting is sheltered from the wind. So I’ll fiddle for your friend.” As he spoke he began to play.
Looks as of great pain came over the pale faces of his two listeners in the raspberry bush. And they shuddered so violently that they had to cling tightly to their seats to keep from falling.
“My friend thanks you. But she says she doesn’t care for your fiddling,” Tommy Tree Cricket called down to Chirpy. “She says it’s too squeaky.”
Chirpy Cricket was fiddling so hard by that time that he never heard a word. And when he stopped at last, to rest a bit, a voice cried out, “That’s fine! Won’t you play some more?”
Chirpy Cricket was pleased. He thought, of course, that it was Tommy’s friend speaking to him. But when he looked up he couldn’t see her anywhere—nor her companion either.
They had both disappeared. And it was already gray in the east.