"Don't mention it," she said. "I suppose you've come to help us, and I'm very glad to see you. It is really most unfortunate, but I couldn't possibly let my husband come—the first Christmas Eve he has missed for years—but, as I said to him, 'If your leg's frostbitten, you're much better in your hole.' Don't you agree with me?"
"Oh, yes, I think so," said Winnie, who felt she must say something.
"Of course we shall miss him very much," said the Great Green Grasshopper's wife, "but if the Field Cricket isn't too nervous, I dare say we shall pull through. I see you have brought our drummer with you, and here is the Mole Cricket coming up, and the Wood Cricket, and I saw the Bush-cheeps a moment ago. Do you really mean to tell me that you have never met any of them? Then I must introduce you. This is the Mole Cricket. You can't ever mistake him if you have once seen his feet; and this is the Field Cricket—you can't mistake a blackamoor like him either; and this is the Wood Cricket with the check trowsers; and the Bush-cheep always wears a brown tail-coat and a greeny waistcoat. Now you all know each other and we must get to work. What do you play?"
Winnie had been getting a little uneasy all this time, for the Crickets had been unpacking their instruments and making little scrapes just like the band before the pantomime, and she had felt that she would be expected to do something too, and had made up her mind as to what she would say if she were asked.
"I can play a grass-blade a little," she said.
"Well, there's lots of grass about," said the Great Green Grasshopper's wife. "Let's hear you do it."
So Winnie picked a big blade of grass and jammed it tight between the balls of her thumbs and pressed her lips hard against it and began to play. The first note sent the Great Green Grasshopper's wife's hind legs straight up in the air, turned the Mole Cricket and the House Cricket and the Wood Cricket and the Bush-cheeps head-over-heels, and drove the Field Cricket into his hole.
"Easy, easy!" said the Great Green Grasshopper's wife. "You nearly blew my tail off. Can't you play more softly?"
THIS IS THE MOLE CRICKET