“It is Locustidae,” said Mr. Grasshopper, answering his own question. “Funny too, for there isn’t a locust among us. Locusts are the shorthorned grasshoppers—that is, their antennæ are shorter than ours. They are cousins, but we are not proud of them. They are not very good.”
“No one is asking you to be proud,” said a grasshopper, jumping from a nearby grass blade. She had a plump gray and green body, red legs, and brown wings, with a broad lemon-yellow band.
“What’s the matter with me?” she demanded. “I guess you don’t know what you are talking about. It’s the Western fellow that is so bad. We Eastern locusts are different.”
“Well, I suppose you are,” agreed the longhorn. “I know the Western locusts travel in swarms and eat every green thing in sight. They are called the hateful grasshoppers.”
“No one can say that our family has ever been called hateful or anything like it,” said a little cricket with a merry chirp. “We are considered very cheery company, and one of the sweetest stories ever written was about our English cousin, the house cricket.”
“I am sure you mean ‘The Cricket on the Hearth,’” said Ruth. “It is a lovely story, and I think crickets are just dear. Are you a house cricket too?”
“No, I belong to the fields, and I sing all day. Sometimes I go into the house when Winter comes and sing by the fire at night, but my real home is in the earth. I dig a hole in a sunny spot and Mrs. Cricket lays her eggs at the bottom, and fastens them to the ground with a kind of glue. Sometimes there are three hundred of them, and you can imagine what a lively family they are when they hatch.”
“I should like to see them,” said Ruth, for it was quite impossible for her to imagine so many baby crickets together.
“Well, it is a sight, I assure you,” answered the little cricket. “Did you ever come across my cousin the mole cricket? She is very large and quite clever. She makes a wonderful home with many halls around her nest. She is always on guard too so that no one may touch her precious eggs. Then I have another cousin, who doesn’t dress in brown like me, but is all white. He lives on trees and shrubs and doesn’t eat leaves and grass as we do. He prefers aphides. You can hear him making music on Summer evenings. We crickets seldom fly. We——”
The sentence was not finished, for just then a long droning note grew on the air, increasing in volume, until it rose above the meadow chorus.