"And chocolate cake!" "And root-beer!" "And peppermints!" "Ssh!" said Mrs. Reece, "or every one in the car will know what little piggies you are. Ask Lizzie for the basket." [Illustration: _A._ Outer wing of locust. _B._ Inner wing of locust. _C._ Sideview of locust. _a._ Antenna. _b._ Simple eye. _c._ Compound eye. _d._ Thorax. _e._ Abdomen. _f._ Breathing pore. _g._ Ear. _D._ Hind leg of locust.] Every minute the air was growing cooler. The children could smell the pine woods, and once in a while the train flashed by a great big sawmill, or a lake set like a sapphire in the deep green of the forests. And the hills were rolling nearer and nearer in great shadows. The children ate their luncheon contentedly, looking out of the windows and thinking of the mountains there would be to climb, the ponds, the streams to fish, the pictures to take, and the stories they were to hear the summer long. "Mother," said Betty, eating her second piece of chocolate cake--"mother, what will Ben Gile tell us this summer?" "Let me see," said her mother, "perhaps it will be about the little creatures--grasshoppers and katydids, butterflies and bees." "Goody!" "Pooh!" said Jimmie, "I don't see what you want to know of those old things. I'd much rather hear about porcupines. There isn't anything to say about a grasshopper except that it hops." "Isn't there, my son? Well, that shows that you don't use your eyes. Suppose some one said there was nothing to say about you except that you whistle?" "Well, what is there about an old grasshopper, anyhow?" "I don't know, but Ben will." "But tell us something, mum," urged Jimmie, who loved his mother dearly, and was certain she knew more than anybody else, in part because she had been to college, but chiefly because she was his mother. "Let me see," said Mrs. Reece, "I shall have to think about it." Both of the children came as close to her as they could, while she continued: "What a strange world it would be if there were no insects in it! We should have no little crickets chirping in the sunny fields or in the dark corners and cracks of our houses. There would be no katydids singing all night, no clacking of the locusts in the tall grass along dusty roads, no drowsy hum of bees. There would be no little ants and big ants digging out underground tunnels and carrying the grains of sand as far from their doorways as possible. There would be no brightly colored moths and butterflies flitting from flower to flower. We should find no sparkling fairy webs spun anew for us every morning." "But, mother, all these creatures aren't insects," said Jimmie. "Yes, they are, dear. It is hard to believe that they all belong to the same family called insecta, but they do." "Mother, what's that word mean?"