“How stupid of them,” said Katy, “not to know better than to put their house in the garden-walk; that’s just like those Ants!”
“Well, they are in great trouble; all their stores destroyed, and their father killed,—cut quite in two by a hoe.”
“How very shocking! I don’t like to hear of such disagreeable things,—it affects my nerves terribly. Well, I’m sure I haven’t anything to give. Mamma said yesterday she was sure she didn’t know how our bills were to be paid,—and there’s my green satin with point-lace yet to come home.” And Miss Katy-did shrugged her shoulders and affected to be very busy with Colonel Katy-did, in just the way that young ladies sometimes do when they wish to signify to visitors that they had better leave.
Little Miss Cricket perceived how the case stood, and so hopped briskly off, without giving herself even time to be offended. “Poor extravagant little thing!” said she to herself, “it was hardly worth while to ask her.”
“Pray, shall you invite the Crickets?” said Colonel Katy-did.
“Who? I? Why, Colonel, what a question! Invite the Crickets? Of what can you be thinking?”
“And shall you not ask the Locusts, or the Grasshoppers?”
“Certainly. The Locusts, of course,—a very old and distinguished family; and the Grasshoppers are pretty well, and ought to be asked. But we must draw a line somewhere,—and the Crickets! why, it’s shocking even to think of!”