"Why, Luce!" said Billy; and he walked out of the kitchen without another word. He was grieved, Lucinda ran after him.
"Billy!" she said.
"What?" said Billy, chopping away furiously at a big pine log.
"I didn't mean that I wouldn't go if you thought best; only that I hated to leave the folks. Of course, I expect we'll go when the time comes. You needn't get mad."
"Oh, I ain't mad," said poor Billy; "but it sounded kind o' disappintin', I tell yer. I like the folks's well's you do; but a man wants to have his own place, and his children a growin' up round him; but I shan't ask you to go till you're ready: you may rest 'sured o' that." And with this half way making up, Lucinda had to be satisfied.
Before the second summer was over, Mr. March was quite ready to acknowledge that it would have been wiser to follow his wife's advice, and lay up all the money which they did not absolutely need to spend. Just as the crops were well up, and bidding fair to be as large as before, there came all of a sudden, in a night, a great army of grasshoppers and ate everything up. You little children in the East who have seen grasshoppers only a few at a time, as you walk through the fields in the summer, cannot have the least idea of how terrible a thing an army of grasshoppers can be. It comes through the air like a great cloud: in less than a minute, the ground, the fences, the trees, the bushes, the grass, the door-steps, the outsides of the windows, are all covered thick with them; millions and millions of millions, all eating, eating, as fast as they can eat. If you drive over a road where they are, they rise up in great masses, their wings making a whistling noise, and horses are afraid to go along. Think of that: a great creature like a horse afraid of such little creatures as grasshoppers! Nobody would believe without seeing it, how a garden or a field looks after one of these grasshopper armies has passed over it. It looks as bare and brown as if it had been burned with fire. There is not left the smallest bit of green leaf in it. This is the way all Mr. March's fields looked in one week after the grasshoppers came into the valley. All the other farmers' fields were in the same condition. It was enough to make your heart ache to look at them. After there was nothing more left to eat, then the great army spread its wings and moved on to the South.
Mr. March looked around him in despair. It had all happened so suddenly he was confused and perplexed. It was almost like having your house burn down over your head. In one week he had lost a whole year's income. It was too late for the things to grow again before the autumn frosts which come very early in the valley.
This was real trouble. However, Mr. and Mrs. March kept up good courage, and hoped it would never happen again. They sold their pretty new carriage and all the other things that they could spare, to get money to buy food for themselves and for the cattle; and they told Billy and Lucinda that they could not afford to keep them any longer.
"We must do all our own work this winter, Billy," said Mr. March; "if you don't get any thing better to do, I'll be glad of you next summer; but this winter we have got to be as saving as possible. Rob will help me, and Nelly'll help her mother: we must put our shoulders to the wheel like the rest."
Billy was not surprised to hear this. On the morning the grasshoppers appeared, he had said to Lucinda:—