“No more do I, but some people have queer ideas about things. Well, I don’t care much. There is my mate over there. Do you notice the sword-shaped ovipositor at the end of her body? She uses it to make holes in the ground and also to lay her eggs in the hole after it is finished. Yes, she is very careful. Her eggs stay there all Winter, and hatch in the Spring, not into grubs or caterpillars, or anything of that sort. They will be grasshoppers, small, it is true, and without wings, but true grasshoppers, which need only to grow and change their skins to be just like us. And I’m sure we have nothing to be ashamed of. We have plenty of eyes, six legs, and ears on our forelegs, not like you people who have queer things on the sides of your heads. Such a place for hearing! but every one to his taste. Well, to go on, we have wing covers, and lovely wings under them, a head full of lips and jaws, and a jump that _is_ a jump. What more could one wish? Do you know what our family name is?” Ruth didn’t know they had a family name, so of course she could not say what it was. “It is Locustidae,” said Mr. Grasshopper, answering his own question. “Funny too, for there isn’t a locust among us. Locusts are the shorthorned grasshoppers—that is, their antennæ are shorter than ours. They are cousins, but we are not proud of them. They are not very good.” “No one is asking you to be proud,” said a grasshopper, jumping from a nearby grass blade. She had a plump gray and green body, red legs, and brown wings, with a broad lemon-yellow band. “What’s the matter with me?” she demanded. “I guess you don’t know what you are talking about. It’s the Western fellow that is so bad. We Eastern locusts are different.” “Well, I suppose you are,” agreed the longhorn. “I know the Western locusts travel in swarms and eat every green thing in sight. They are called the hateful grasshoppers.” “No one can say that our family has ever been called hateful or anything like it,” said a little cricket with a merry chirp. “We are considered very cheery company, and one of the sweetest stories ever written was about our English cousin, the house cricket.” “I am sure you mean ‘The Cricket on the Hearth,’” said Ruth. “It is a lovely story, and I think crickets are just dear. Are you a house cricket too?” “No, I belong to the fields, and I sing all day. Sometimes I go into the house when Winter comes and sing by the fire at night, but my real home is in the earth. I dig a hole in a sunny spot and Mrs. Cricket lays her eggs at the bottom, and fastens them to the ground with a kind of glue. Sometimes there are three hundred of them, and you can imagine what a lively family they are when they hatch.” “I should like to see them,” said Ruth, for it was quite impossible for her to imagine so many baby crickets together.