Part 10 (1/2)

”My goodness! Can that be rain?” Freddie Firefly exclaimed. ”The moon is s.h.i.+ning. And I don't see a cloud in the sky.”

Even as he spoke the strange sound grew louder.

”Can it be hailing?” Freddie asked Kiddie Katydid anxiously.

”Oh, no!” Kiddie told him. ”What you hear is nothing but Leaper the Locust's cousin's family. They're just beginning to arrive.”

Freddie Firefly could scarcely believe his own ears.

”Why, there must be dozens of them!” he cried.

”More than that!” Kiddie Katydid replied.

”Hundreds, then!”

”Still more!” Kiddie Katydid said.

”Well, _thousands_, then!” cried Freddie Firefly. ”You don't mean to say there are more of 'em than that?”

”There are tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands,” Kiddie Katydid declared solemnly. ”They'll eat everything they can find. And we shall be lucky if they leave enough for the rest of us to live on, after they pa.s.s on.”

”How did you learn all this?” Freddie Firefly wanted to know.

”That's another of my secrets,” said Kiddie Katydid.

So Freddie Firefly went off to hunt for Leaper the Locust. He knew now why Leaper had struggled to escape from that mysterious messenger with the curious message. And Freddie intended to ask Leaper a good many questions about his cousins.

But he couldn't find Leaper anywhere. He searched for him high and low, and far and wide. But n.o.body knew where Leaper was.

”There are lots of Short-horns everywhere to-night,” Benjamin Bat told him. ”I claim any one of them is just as good as another.” And Benjamin grinned horribly.

Freddie Firefly shuddered. It seemed to him that he had never pa.s.sed such a dreadful night before.

But Benjamin Bat was having the time of his life. He said that he hoped the Short-horns would like Pleasant Valley so well that they would decide to stay right there for the rest of their days. But, strange to say, Benjamin made things as unpleasant as possible for the newcomers.

He _ate_ as many of them as he could, remarking that from such a horde a few would scarcely be missed.

XXIII

THE BEST OF FRIENDS

In spite of his lengthened horns, Leaper the Locust hardly dared show himself while his cousins remained in the neighborhood.

But when he did venture out, not one of the hungry horde paid the slightest heed to him. They just ate and ate and ate. And Pleasant Valley soon began to take on a brown, withered look, as if fall had already come.

Kiddie Katydid soon saw that he would have to move, if Leaper's cousins lingered there much longer. And he didn't like the thought of quitting his home.

”I wouldn't mind going, if I could take Farmer Green's dooryard with me,” he remarked to a long-horned gentleman who stopped to talk with him one evening. ”But of course,” Kiddie added with a smile, ”that's out of the question.”