Little Busybodies | Page 8

fertile valleys
in rustling hordes, and ate everything in sight--grass, grains, vegetables,
and bushes. They ate and ate and ate until they had eaten up fifty
million dollars' worth of food, and the poor farmer could hear nothing
but the sound of the chewing of those ever-swinging jaws. Now, be off,
little girl, or my pails won't be clean."
"Oh, please, sir, just tell me how they jump and breathe."
"Dear, dear, see this fellow!" He had wet a little grain of maple sugar,
and a tiny meadow grasshopper which had alighted on his knee was
pushing the sweet stuff into its mouth with both fore legs. "Child, you

must never," said the old man, savagely, "push your food in that way."
"Please, sir," answered Betty, "I never do, because I eat with my fork
and my knife. Please, sir, are they happy when they jump?"
"Looks like a horse, doesn't it?" asked the old man. "It's made for
jumping. Think of all the training it takes to make a jumper of your
brother at school. Well, this chap can jump ten times as far. It's born
with a better jump than the longest-legged boy you ever saw. But the
locust might get its head cut off when jumping if it weren't for this little
saddle that covers the soft part of the neck. Mr. Locust can't always
look before he leaps, as a little girl can, and the knife edge of a blade of
grass would cut its head right off if it weren't for this saddle. See, here
are its long leaping-legs, and on the back edge of these are some spines
to keep it from slipping, and the feet are padded with several soft little
cushions that keep it from chin-chopping itself to pieces when it lands
after a long jump. And here, my dear, are little rest-legs just behind the
front legs. With these Mr. Locust hangs on to a blade of grass when
tired--a fine idea, child; every little boy and girl ought to have some
rest-legs like the locust. And the locust has some extra eyes, too."
Ben Gile was going so fast now that Betty was listening to him, mouth
open, as he pointed with a blade of grass to one thing after another.
"You see, the locust has two big eyes, and there in the middle of the
forehead it has three little eyes, and with five eyes there isn't much it
can't see. And here on the body are two tiny shining oval windows.
These are ear-laps, and that, my dear, is the way it hears. And upon the
sides of the body (the thorax--that is, just the chest) and his abdomen
are tiny holes. The air enters through these, and that is the way Mr.
Locust breathes."
"Oh," said Betty, "then it hasn't got any nose? I thought everything in
the world had a nose."
"And this little body," the old man went on, "is as strong as a grub hoe.
With it the locust makes holes in fence rails, logs, stumps, and the earth,
and in those holes mother locust lays her eggs. See, those four spines

are for boring holes. With these Mrs. Locust bores a hole in the ground,
and then with these same spines she guides the bundles of eggs into the
hole and covers them up with a gummy stuff. There the eggs stay until
next spring, when, my dear, out comes a little hopper with no wings,
and this little hopper is called a nymph. It grows and splits its skin,
grows and splits its skin, and with its new skin--it has five or six skins,
and leaves all its old clothes hanging around on the bushes--its wings
grow bigger and bigger. At last it flies off just as its mother and father
did a year ago."
Ben Gile tossed the locust into the air and called out, "Shoo!" clapping
his hands loudly together. Out from the woods came two baby deer, a
wise, gentle old cow; from the cabin came a mother cat and three
kittens and a big black dog; and from the trees scampered down a half a
dozen squirrels.
"Time for dinner."
Betty went up to him and whispered something in his ear. The old man
nodded his head solemnly, and the little girl went trotting along the
path to Rangeley Village.

IV
FIDDLERS
There was the greatest scurrying around in the fields on the edge of the
woods about Ben Gile's cabin. Little girls and boys were flitting hither
and thither with pretty nets and small boxes strapped over their
shoulders. Inside the boxes there seemed to be just as much hopping
about as there was outside.
By-and-by the guide put his head out of his cabin door and called,