“Then we had supper. There were cold roast chicken, tiny hot biscuits and peach preserves, three kinds of cake, and hot chocolate that Aggie had learned to make in Clayville and none of us had ever tasted before.
“Mother and Aggie had given me those presents in the morning just to fool me. Aggie had brought me a lovely story book, and Mother had a string of pretty pink beads for me. Charlie gave me a little basket he had whittled out of a peach seed, and from Father I got a silver dollar.
“And now good night, pleasant dreams.”
THE LOCUSTS
“Grandma,” said Bobby one evening, “did you ever see a locust—a seventeen-year locust? And why are they called seventeen-year locusts?”
“Oh, yes, I’ve seen locusts and heard them, too,” answered Grandma, taking up her knitting. “They are called seventeen-year locusts because they come every seventeen years. They lay their eggs in a tree. These eggs hatch tiny worms, called larvae, which fall to the ground and stay there for seventeen years changing slowly until they have turned into locusts. They live only about thirty days, but they often do a great deal of damage in this time. One year when I was a little girl all our fruit was eaten by the locusts and many of the trees were killed. They ate the garden stuff, the potato tops, and even the flowers, so it must have been somewhat as it was in Pharaoh’s time.
“You remember Pharaoh was the king of Egypt who refused to let the children of Israel go. For this God sent the plagues on Pharaoh and the people of Egypt. One of these plagues was the locusts. God caused a strong east wind to blow all day and all night, and this wind brought the locusts. They were every place—all over the ground, in Pharaoh’s house, and in the houses of his people. They ate all the vegetables and fruits, even the leaves on the trees, so there was nothing green left in all the land. The noise they made must have been awful. When Pharaoh repented, the Lord sent a strong west wind which blew the locusts away, and they were drowned in the Red Sea. Ever since that time people have thought the locusts say ‘Pharaoh.’
“I believe I’ll tell you tonight about the first time I ever heard a locust. Mother wondered one day at dinner whether there were any blackberries ripe yet. She said she wished she had enough for a few pies. So that afternoon I took a pail and started for the blackberry field. I didn’t tell anyone where I was going, for I wanted to surprise Mother. I was afraid that if she knew she mightn’t let me go alone, for she was timid about snakes. Sure enough, I saw a snake nearly the first thing, but it was a harmless little garter snake and scuttled away into the bushes as soon as it heard me.