“They make fiddles of themselves and play, Minerva.”
Minerva looked at me seriously.
“That’s it, Minerva,” said Ethel eagerly. “They scrape their wings in some way and that makes the sound. You don’t know how many things there are to learn about the country and, Minerva, it isn’t half as dangerous as the city. To-morrow if it is pleasant, we’ll go out and try to catch a grasshopper playing his little fiddle. You may go, now, Minerva.”
Minerva went out and closed the kitchen door and the next minute the house shook. I thought of the powder mills at Mildon. Again the house shook.
“It is Minerva hopping,” said Ethel.
“Pretty close to six hundred feet, from the sound,” said I.
CHAPTER XII
“THE SIMPLE LIFE.”
I HAD strung up a hammock between two trees in front of the house and days when Ethel did not feel like walking she used to lie in it while I sat by her side and read to her. She would have been glad to read to me some times, but if there is anything I dislike it is to be read to. I can never follow what is being said unless I have a book in front of me, and besides as I cannot knit and do not know how to draw it would be time wasted for me to sit still and listen to reading.
We are so built, the most of us, that we consider we are wasting time unless our hands are moving. If a woman sits with her hands in her lap thinking great thoughts she is manifestly idle. But if she sits embroidering tasteless doilies and thinking of nothing, she has found something for her hands to do and Satan is foiled again. How often he is foiled these days.