"But, please, sir," said Betty, who was almost ready to cry, she was so teased—"please tell me one of your own stories."
Ben Gile began to swash his bucket up and down, up and down, in the stream until the water fairly rocked. Then he pulled the bucket out of the water, set it beside him, and reached out after a locust.
"Here he is." There was a long pause. Betty thought he would never go on. "Well, once upon a time there was a little army and all its uniforms were brown and green, and from the meanest soldier in the ranks to the lieutenant-commander this little army was made up of insects who belonged to the same tribe. Let me see—there were the grasshoppers and the locusts and the katydids and the crickets."
"Please, sir, were they cousins?"
"I think they were, my dear. Yes, first cousins, and, unlike even my first cousins, they all have wings, and straight wings like this."
The guide gently spread out one of the wings.
"Just where the back of your chest is these wings grow—two pairs of wings, my dear, and two pairs of wings mean a good deal more than two pairs of new shoes. This first pair is straight and narrow and hard, because it is meant to cover the gauzy wings underneath. Puff!"
Away flew the locust.
"You see, he doesn't use his first pair, but holds them out straight from his body while he spreads out the gauzy ones like a—like a—"
"Fan!" shouted Betty, quite forgetting the tiny squirrel who had come up near her, and, at her shout, nearly jumped out of his little red jacket.