"Nothing to make such a fuss over," said a Milkweed Butterfly. "Just crawl into your holes or fly away."
"Sometimes they step on the holes and close them," said an Ant. "What would you do if you were in a hole and it stopped being a hole and was just earth?"
"Crawl out, I suppose," answered the Milkweed Butterfly with a careless flutter.
"Yes," said the Ant, "but I don't see what there would be to crawl out through."
The Milkweed Butterfly was already gone. Butterflies never worry about anything very long, you know.
"Has anybody seen the Measuring Worm?" asked the Katydid. "Where is he?"
"Oh, I'm up a tree," answered a pleasant voice above their heads, "but I sha'n't be up a tree very long. I shall come down when the grass is cut."
"Oh, dear, dear, dear!" cried the Ants, hurrying around. "We can't think what we want to do. We don't know what we ought to do. We can't think and we don't know, and we don't think that we ought to!"
"Click!" said a Grasshopper, springing into the air. "We must hurry, hurry, hurry!" He jumped from a stalk of pepper-grass to a plantain. "We must hurry," he said, and he jumped from the plantain back to the pepper-grass.
Up in the tree where the Measuring Worm was, some Katydids were sitting on a branch and singing shrilly: "Did you ever? Did you ever? Ever? Ever? Ever? Did you ever?" And this shows how much excited they were, for they usually sang only at night.