The Cheerful Cricket and Others | Page 7

Humming. These two things, unlike other people, they always did at the same time.
Mrs. Cricky came out with an angry little flounce, as I said, onto the piazza of Grass Cottage. She had been fearfully disturbed, but the instant she saw the Noisy Fly she broke into chirping merriment. The Noisy Fly had evidently been to last evening's concert and was trying to imitate Miss K. T. Did in the Fire-Fly Dance. He was whisking around at a great rate, his long legs looking very spindly under his fat black body. But what amused Mrs. Cricky most was the way, in trying to do the wing step, his legs got tangled up for all the world as if they were on sticky fly paper. Of course, he fell over, and that accounted for the bumping and the buzzing. But each time he got up and went at it again as if nothing had happened, singing in his high falsetto voice the tune Miss Glo-Worm had sung, which was a little Moonbeam Song,--to find out what a Moonbeam Song is you must look long at the sky.
Moonbeam Song
Not too fast Moonbeams weave, About this place, Fairies leave No Fairy trace.
Weave him in And weave him out, Spin it thin And round about.
Ding-dong, ding-dong, ding
See our spell Can hold him fast. Tinkle bell The hour is past.
It was not very polite for Mrs. Cricky to laugh, but really she could not help it. Never did she see such a buzzing, clumsy attempt at imitation as this. By this time the Noisy Fly had spied Mrs. Cricky, and his popping black eyes scanned her anxiously, for he was accustomed to be driven off wherever he went. Mrs. Cricky remembered the interrupted lessons and spoke severely to him:
"Well, Noisy! here again. You are always disturbing somebody. You are just like some other folks who never know when they are not wanted. Noisy people are always a nuisance. You are about, before respectable crickets have a chance to go to sleep. Buzz, Buzz, Buzz! so that there is no sleeping after that. Your noisy wings are worse than Toadie Todson's heavy feet, when he used to come hopping onto the piazza after the folks were asleep. And what is more, you're not much cleaner." By this time Mrs. Cricky had worked herself into a state of "righteous indignation," and concluded all she had to say with a sharp, "Be off."
Off went Noisy in a great flurry and skurry; he fairly dropped from the roof of the piazza, where he had been hanging upside down, in his haste to let go and get away. When Mrs. Cricky went back into the school room she found that Chirp had upset his brown Grasshopper writing ink all over the floor and was wiping it up with his little wing and smearing it onto Chee. Now this ink was expensive, and could be bought only from the Grasshopper who manufactured it himself. She looked at Chirp just one second and told him to bring the Timothy Grass rod hanging in the corner. Chirp knew what that meant, but he took his punishment bravely.
When Mrs. Cricky had finished, she dropped the rod on the floor with a sigh and gathered Chirp into her wings: "O! Chirpie, Chirpie, why will you be such a naughty little cricket and make me punish you?" Then Mother Cricky gave them a little talk about Noisy, and told them there were two things they must always remember to be: Clean, and quiet when it was proper to be quiet. After this she gave them some Red Clover Honey and sent them out to play.

THE DIZZY MOTH
Dizzy batted up against the window, striking his head and wings with a hard rattle. Mother Moth, like a good mother, had told Dizzy time and time again never to fly toward a light. Dizzy had already had some experience with odd lights hung up on poles among the oak-trees. These lights had hoods over them, hard and white. Dizzy often wondered why the white hoods were not as soft as the oak-buds, notwithstanding the fact that his mother as often explained both to him and his little Sister Flutter that electric lights were not oak-buds.
Poor Dizzy, there is no use in preaching! Up, up through the oak-tree he flew, now tumbling against a branch, now untangling himself from a sticky new bud. Up, up Dizzy sped toward a square white glare of light. Little Flutter's yellow wings trembled with fear as she saw her brother start upward. She told him in a faint voice that window panes were very dangerous. Mother Moth had cautioned them both about window panes.
Dizzy stumbled onto the sill with a sickening thud, scattering the diamond dust from his sun-colored pearl wings into a fine