Nobody could call his horns long. Nor could anyone call them medium. They were short; and no one in his right mind would deny it.
"Where's that fellow you call Leaper?" the messenger asked Chirpy Cricket. "Here's his cousin! And the rest of the family will be dropping down here in just a few minutes."
Chirpy Cricket replied that he hadn't seen Leaper the Locust since the night before.
"That's strange!" the messenger remarked, turning to his fat companion. "He was to be here to welcome you."
"Ah! I see him now! He's right here in this tree!" exclaimed the fat one. And he half-jumped, half-flew into Kiddie Katydid's favorite tree.
"You're wrong!" said Kiddie Katydid. "I'm a Long-horn—and you can't claim to be a cousin of mine."
"My mistake! My mistake!" said the fat gentleman hastily. And he left even more suddenly than he had come.
"I hope your friend Leaper hasn't given us the slip," he remarked to the messenger as he joined him again.
"Never fear! If he fails us we'll find him and punish him as he deserves," said the messenger with a savage frown.
And Kiddie Katydid, looking down from his tree-top, was gladder than ever that he had escaped this terrible trouble that had come to Leaper the Locust.