Little Busybodies | Page 7

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. Then he pulled the bucket out of
the water, set it beside him, and reached out after a locust.
"Here he is." There was a long pause. Betty thought he would never go
on. "Well, once upon a time there was a little army and all its uniforms
were brown and green, and from the meanest soldier in the ranks to the
lieutenant-commander this little army was made up of insects who
belonged to the same tribe. Let me see--there were the grasshoppers
and the locusts and the katydids and the crickets."
"Please, sir, were they cousins?"

"I think they were, my dear. Yes, first cousins, and, unlike even my
first cousins, they all have wings, and straight wings like this."
The guide gently spread out one of the wings.
"Just where the back of your chest is these wings grow--two pairs of
wings, my dear, and two pairs of wings mean a good deal more than
two pairs of new shoes. This first pair is straight and narrow and hard,
because it is meant to cover the gauzy wings underneath. Puff!"
Away flew the locust.
"You see, he doesn't use his first pair, but holds them out straight from
his body while he spreads out the gauzy ones like a--like a--"
"Fan!" shouted Betty, quite forgetting the tiny squirrel who had come
up near her, and, at her shout, nearly jumped out of his little red jacket.
"A yellow fan," said the old man. "And some have a red fan. Well, I
think," said he, reaching for his pail, "there isn't going to be any more
of this story."
"Not any more? But there must be more, sir; I've seen hundreds and
hundreds of them on a dusty road, and, please, they're just the color of
the dirt."
The guide shook his head. "Not to-day."
By this time Betty was so eager to have him go on that she had
forgotten all about being afraid of him. "And when they whir up from
the road, sir, they say, 'Clack! clack! clack!'"
The old man made a sound like the noise of a locust.
"How does it make its mouth move, sir?"
"It doesn't make its mouth move, child. It makes the noise by striking
the edges of the gauzy wings and hard wing covers together. See, this
way!" And the old man struck his arm and leg together. "It has another

fiddle, too, which it uses when it makes the long, rasping, drowsy
sound of summer days. Then it rubs the rough edges of its hind leg
against the edge of its wing-cover."
"Please, is it happy, then?" asked Betty.
"Just as happy as a healthy locust, who lives in long, sweet-smelling
grass and is contented with his own singing, can be, and that is very
happy."
"Oh!" said Betty, "it doesn't use its mouth, then? Jimmie said it did."
"Jimmie's a stupid boy. See this fellow." The old man held the locust
toward Betty. "With its upper lip, broad, you see; and there is the lower
lip made in two scallops, and there's a short feeler on either side, and
another pair of soft jaws with a feeler. Hidden away under those parts is
a pair of dark-brown, horny jaws which open like two big swinging
gates."
"What makes them so big?"
"The better to eat you with, my dear." The guide worked his jaws until
Betty, half afraid and half pleased, screamed and ran behind a tree. "Oh,
how they can eat!" growled the old man, "more than any little girl or
boy I ever knew! Years and years ago, when your mamma was a baby,
they mounted up into the air from the Rocky Mountains and flew
eastward in a great cloud. Down they swooped upon the