"My goodness! Can that be rain?" Freddie Firefly exclaimed. "The moon is shining. 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."
"I quite agree with you," said the other. "In fact, I"m ready to agree to almost anything you say."
"These Short-horns are a terrible lot!" Kiddie Katydid observed.
"They are, indeed!" exclaimed the polite stranger. "I wish they"d finish their visit here and leave us in peace."
"I never want to see another Short-horn as long as I live," Kiddie Katydid declared.
"Nor I!" echoed the strange gentleman.
And Kiddie Katydid couldn"t help thinking what a pleasant person the long-horned stranger was and how gentle were his manners.
"I"d like to know your name!" he cried. "It"s a long time since I have met anybody so agreeable as you are."
The stranger drew nearer and lowered his voice.
"Don"t you know me?" he asked.
Kiddie Katydid stared at him for a moment.
"No!" he said at length. "To be sure, you do have a familiar look, in a way. But I must say I don"t recognize you."
Then the stranger spoke in a whisper:
"They used to call me "Leaper the Locust"!"
"Go "way!" cried Kiddie Katydid. "_He_ was nothing but a Short-horned Gra.s.shopper. And anyone can see with half an eye that your horns are fully as long as my own."
"They"re not real horns," said the other sadly. "That is, they"re real only a part of the way."
And looking more closely, Kiddie Katydid saw that what he said was true.
It was, indeed, Leaper the Locust. And he was greatly changed in more ways than one.
He had lost his old, quarrelsome air; and he had become very meek and mild.
"Don"t tell my cousins what I"ve done!" he begged Kiddie Katydid. "I don"t want them to know who I am."
Kiddie a.s.sured the poor fellow that he would not betray him. He was sorry for Leaper the Locust.
"You"ll be glad when your relations move on, won"t you?" he said. "Then you can take those bits of gra.s.s off your horns and be yourself again."
Leaper"s answer almost took Kiddie Katydid"s breath away, for it was a most surprising statement.
"I"m never going to be a Short-horn again!" he declared. "I shall wear my horns long to the end of my days."
He kept his word, too. And so earnestly did he try to be like Kiddie Katydid in every way that he even attempted Kiddie"s well known _Katy did_ melody. But he never really succeeded at that. Anyone with an ear for music could tell the difference at once.