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, "How many have you?"

"Oh, lots and lots!" the children answered.

"Bring them in." And the children trooped into the cabin, which they thought quite the most wonderful place in the world. Its walls were lined with books and cases. The books were not only in English, but also in French, German, Italian, Latin, Greek, and other languages, and the cases were filled with scores of specimens, the most beautiful b.u.t.terflies, moths, beetles, birds, flowers, and rare stones. The floor of the cabin was covered by different kinds of skins. Besides, there were telescopes, field-gla.s.ses, magnifying-gla.s.ses, specimen cases, old weapons, and a flute. And by the great wide fireplace, in front of which the guide was cooking biscuits and cookies in a reflector oven, lay several kittens, the old black dog, Thor, and a dappled fawn which Thor was licking.

"Those crickets sound like pop-guns," said the old man, slipping more cookies into the oven and setting a pan of biscuits on a shelf by the hearth.

"Oh, please," said little Hope, "we've got bushels of them!"

"Now we'll let those cookies bake while we 'tend to the fiddlers. Are four pans of cookies enough for five children?"

"Yes, yes."

"Now, Hope, let me have your bushel box. H'm," he murmured, peeping in, "all dressed for the party. What color?"

"Brown, sir."

"Black, too," said Betty; "and on a few," she added, "there's a stripe or a weeny spot of color."

"Oho!" exclaimed the old man, "what have we here?" He took a pale little creature from Hope's basket.

"Why, it's white and green tinted," called Jimmie. "That isn't a cricket."

"Isn't it? Well, it's a first cousin which lives in the trees and loves its tree home so much, like the sensible little fellow it is, that it sings 'Tr-e-e-e, tr-e-e-e,' as fast as it can trill all summer long. But it is very harmful to the tree, because when egg-laying time comes it cuts a long slit in the trees in which to lay its eggs. Just a minute!"

The old man shifted the position of the baker, and out came such a good odor of cookies that all the children sniffed with delight. "Here, Jack," he said, to a brown little fellow in ragged clothes and bare feet, "you have a singer in your box."

"I didn't catch but one," said the lad.

"Briers aren't good for bare legs, are they? Never mind, your crickets won't eat one another."

"Eat one another?" cried the children.

"Yes, crickets are cannibals, like some other insects, and they frequently eat a near relation or a friend, as the people in the Fiji Islands used to do. This is a nice brown little chap, Jack. Do you know how he makes his music?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: _A._ File on wing of cricket.

_B._ Sc.r.a.per on wing of cricket.

_C._ Mrs. Cricket.]

"Why, I suppose," said the boy, "he opens his mouth the way Mr. Tucker does in the church choir, and--"

There was a shout of laughter from Jimmie, who was sure he knew a great deal.

"Well," said the guide to Jim, "then how does it make its music, since you know?"

"Not with its mouth."

"Then how?"

"I don't know, sir," stammered Jimmie, who found he didn't know as much as he thought he did.

"When Mr. Cricket sings," went on the hermit, "it lifts its two wing covers so that the edges meet like the pointed roof of a house. Then your little fiddler, Jack, rubs one edge against the other."

All this time Peter Beech had been waving his hand about, the way children do in school, and giving big sniffs.

"Please, sir, the cookies are burning."

"Bless my soul!" The guide whisked the cookies away.

"Please, sir," said Jack, "are we going to have something soon?" Jack did not look as if he had his share of food to eat, for he was as thin as the fawn which had curled up near him. Jack had twelve brothers and sisters, and a father who wasn't what he ought to be, so there were times when there was no food for Jack.

"Yes, my son," said the guide, kindly, for the old man could guess how hungry the lad was. "But, first, where do you suppose the crickets and katydids have their ears?"

"Near those big eyes," called Peter.

"No, no, on the joint of the fore leg is a little membrane, which is just a thinner, tighter place in the skin of the leg. There!" Ben Gile had the fore leg of Jack's cricket stretched under the magnifying-gla.s.s.

The children could see plainly the film of tight skin. "Underneath the thin, tight skin is a fine nerve which, when the air makes the skin shake, changes the motion into sound. Mrs. Cricket listens with her fore leg while Mr. Cricket sings his love-song to her."

At this the children laughed and laughed, and comical little Peter put up his leg as if listening.

"Here, Pete, give me your box. Do you remember what I told you about Mrs. Locust, Betty, and the way she lays her eggs?"

"Yes, sir. She has four straight spines at the end of her body, and after she has bored a hole with her body she guides the eggs in with the four spines."

"Good! Well, Mrs. Cricket wears at the end of her body a long spear. See this cricket of Peter's. Now she bores her hole with this spear and then guides her eggs carefully into the hole. Why, see here, Pete, what have you got here?"

The children gazed eagerly over the old man's shoulder.

"My, isn't it like velvet!" exclaimed Peter.

"And isn't it brown!" added Hope.

"But look at its stumpy front legs!" called Jack, who had forgotten his empty stomach in the excitement about this little creature, which looked like a cricket and yet was so different.

"And its little beads of eyes!" said Betty.

"Do you know what it is?" No one knew. "Well, it's a mole cricket. You rarely ever see one because they live underground and bore their way along just like moles, leaving tiny tracks and nibbling the roots of tender plants. You see, it doesn't need eyes any more than the mole does. But it does need those thickened fore legs to do its underground digging. Now, children, run out into the fields and let your crickets go. Be careful not to hurt them. We'll have supper, and after supper we'll catch a katydid."

Out ran the children. Soon they were setting the long wooden tables under the trees with delicious trout the boys had caught, with hot biscuits and jugs of maple syrup, with berries and cookies, with milk from the old cow, who, contentedly chewing her cud, was looking at them through the low crotch of a tree, and with little cakes of maple sugar which the guide had moulded into the shape of hearts.