“Oh!” cried Ruth, spying a creature with great bulging eyes and beautiful, transparent wings, glittering with rainbow tints, “There’s a locust! Isn’t he beautiful, Belinda? Maybe he will tell us some things. Oh, Belinda, aren’t we in luck?”
CHAPTER VII
RUTH MEETS MANY SORTS AND CONDITIONS
The shrill cicadas, people of the pine,
Make their summer lives one ceaseless song.
—Byron.
“A locust, indeed,” said the newcomer, and Ruth could see plainly that he was not pleased. “It does seem to me you should know better than that. Can’t you see I have a sucking beak and not a biting one, like the grasshopper tribe? Besides, my music isn’t made like theirs. No faint, fiddly squeak for me, but a fine sound of drums.”
“I think I’ll move on,” said Mr. Grasshopper, and Ruth could see that he was quite angry. She turned to look at the cricket, but he was far across the field, fiddling to his mate.
“I wish you wouldn’t go,” she said to the grasshopper. “You have been so nice to me and I have learned ever so much from you.”