Little Busybodies | Page 6

all the children's heads were clustered about Ben Gile as he showed them how to line the box with a layer of cork, how to steam the insects a little if they were dry, and then how to put the long, slender pins through the chest of the insect and stick it into the cork.

III
THE LITTLE ARMY
Ben Gile shook his head. As his hair was long and white, and his hands moved with his head, just as if he were a lot of dried branches moving in the wind, it was enough to frighten little Betty. "Plagues of Egypt! Plagues of Egypt!" he kept muttering. Now, Betty had been to school a long time--I think it must have been as much as two whole years, which is a very long time for school and a very short time for climbing trees--now, Betty had been to school and knew better. She crept behind a big beech-tree, but she stuck her little head out and said, in a trembling voice:
"It was locusts, sir, wasn't it--and wild honey?"
Betty wasn't at all certain that any kind of honey could be a plague.
"It was locusts, child--yes, you're right," answered the old man. "Locusts it was; but you eat wild honey."
Betty came out from behind the tree and whispered, "You eat them both?"
"So men did in the Bible," said Ben Gile, and washing his sugar-pails, and putting his maple sugar camp--a very sweet place for a little girl to be when there are still piles of maple sugar packed away on the shelves--in order for the summer.
In all her short life Betty had never known another old man like him. In the winter he taught school; in spring he made maple sugar; in summer he was guiding about the ponds or looking up into the trees most of the time; and in the fall he cut wood before he went back to teaching; but what was oddest of all to Betty was that he knew the squirrels and deer and rabbits as well as he seemed to know little girls or little boys. There was a story told in those woods about his taming even a trout so that one morning it hopped out of the water and followed him everywhere he went--hop, hop, flop behind him. And in the evening, as Ben Gile and his tame trout were passing by the pond again, the trout fell in and was drowned. But, dear me, that is a fish story, and you mustn't believe any fish stories whatever except those your father tells! Still, if your grandpa is fond of fishing, you may believe his fish stories, too.
[Illustration: A. A locust. B. Cast-off skin of a young locust.]
Betty came out farther from behind the tree. "Please, sir, do you eat grasshoppers?"
"Not yet, my dear." The old man's eyes twinkled. "I knew a little boy once"--Betty was wondering whether this old man had ever been a little boy himself--"I knew a little boy once who wasn't afraid to swallow even a caterpillar, but I think that little boy never thought of eating a grasshopper." The old man shook his head gravely. "No, not a grasshopper."
"Please, sir," said Betty, coming right up to the bucket he was washing in the brook--"please, sir, do you know any stories about grasshoppers?"
Ben Gile laid his finger along his nose and thought. Betty was sure he knew a hundred million stories, and that he could tell her something about anything she might ask for in all the world.
"Well, once upon a time," the old man began, "there was another old man who was a great deal wiser than I am, and a great deal richer, my dear, for he owned a whole kingdom and lived in a palace, and his name was--"
"Solomon!" called out Betty, dancing up and down, out of pride in her own wisdom.
"Right! And this other old man said:
"There are four things which are little upon the earth, but they are exceedingly wise:
"The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer;
"The conies are but a feeble folk, yet make they their houses in the rocks;
"The locusts have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands;
"The spider taketh hold with her hands and is in kings' palaces."
"But that's not a story."
The guide shook his head. "You don't know a story, child, when you hear one. It began, 'Once upon a time,' didn't it?"
"Yes, sir; but please tell me another."
"Well, there are others in the Bible, my dear, about locusts and grasshoppers."
"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.