Chirp, for chirp is all our song
Cheerful chirps
Will help a long.
LADY BUG AND MRS. POE TATO-BUG
"Well," said Mrs. Poe Tato-Bug, "it's a pity such things have to go on. What those horrid black Road-worms mean by eating up all the apple leaves is more than I can see."
Lady Bug listened to this outburst quietly, as if she had been accustomed to such words from her kinswoman. Finally she said:
"Really, I can't see that they do any more harm than—"
"Crack! Crack! Crack!" spluttered Mrs. Poe Tato-Bug, forgetting entirely the dignity of a hyphenated name; "hum! why, there won't be a single leaf on a single apple tree left to shade me and my family by time July comes. Hum, indeed!"
"Yes, my dear," said Lady Bug, who was always reasonable as well as gentle, "I understand all you say, but you know yourself that we eat leaves."
"Huh!" sniffed Mrs. Poe Tato-Bug, "I can't see that it's the same thing at all. What good's a leaf to a Potato, now, just tell me that!"
"I only know this," replied Lady Bug, "last year Mrs. Cricket overheard Farmer Hayseed say that if he could get rid of the Poe Tato-Bug family he'd live twenty years longer. He said we ate up the leaves and made the roots good for nothing. I presume he meant our family"
"For a quiet body you can say the meanest things," exclaimed Mrs. Poe Tato-Bug. Just then Mrs. Cricket, head down, went hurrying by and said as she passed,