Little Busybodies | Page 6

Lizzie." Lizzie was looking at the palm of her hand, which showed how
badly it had been stung.
"Now, you see, we'll need something to pick up these little creatures
with--a pair of forceps or something of that kind. At least, you must be
very careful."
"And what else do we need?" asked the children.
"A little hand lens will magnify the small parts of an insect a great deal.
It will show you all the tiny hairs on the body, and the little rings and
the feelers and the facets of the eyes, and many another wonderful
thing."
"What are we going to put the bugs in?" inquired Jimmie.
"Lizzie will get you a small wooden box," said Mrs. Reece.
Lizzie went off grumbling something about guides and bites and insects,
but soon she came back with a nice box, and in a minute 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