"Please, sir," said Betty, coming right up to the bucket he was washing in the brook--"please, sir, do you know any stories about gra.s.shoppers?"
Ben Gile laid his finger along his nose and thought. Betty was sure he knew a hundred million stories, and that he could tell her something about anything she might ask for in all the world.
"Well, once upon a time," the old man began, "there was another old man who was a great deal wiser than I am, and a great deal richer, my dear, for he owned a whole kingdom and lived in a palace, and his name was--"
"Solomon!" called out Betty, dancing up and down, out of pride in 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 gra.s.shoppers."
"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 gra.s.shoppers 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 gra.s.s 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, h.o.r.n.y 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 fertile valleys in rustling hordes, and ate everything in sight--gra.s.s, 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 gra.s.shopper 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 gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s 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.