How she did wish that the funny old tumble bugs would stop rolling their ball, and tell her all about it. They never did, though. They just kept at that ball as though it was the most important thing in the world. Then she wanted to know what the bees whispered to the flowers as they buzzed above them, and whether the butterflies spoke to each other as they flew by in the sunshine. There were the ants, too, always so busy, and in such a hurry. How fast they could run when any one upset their nest; and how funny they looked carrying those queer white bundles. Mother had called these bundles the ants’ babies, but Ruth thought them very odd babies, and she wondered if they had to be fed and bathed and put to sleep like human babies. She wanted to know all about them, and about the spiders too, and their wonderful webs. “Just think what a chance Miss Muffet had,” she said to Belinda, when both were settled to her satisfaction in the willow-tree perch. “Only a very friendly spider would come up and sit down by you, and who knows the interesting things it could tell. The idea of being afraid of a spider anyhow! You might as well be afraid of that funny old toad in the garden, and I don’t believe he could hurt you if he tried. I guess he doesn’t do anything but sleep.” Ruth had been trying to talk to the toad that very morning. He had looked so solemn and so wise as he sat under the shade of a big stone in the damp corner of the garden, “but,” as she said, “he wasn’t any good at all,” for he only looked at her, then drew a film over his eyes, and went on swallowing very hard. “He can talk, though, I know,” she said to Belinda. “They can all talk in their way. It sounds like noise to us, because we can’t understand. Do hear them, Belinda? What are they saying?” But of course Belinda could not answer. She never said more than “mama,” in a very squeaky voice, and you had to squeeze her ever so hard to make her do that. Ruth sighed softly, then, leaning forward with her elbow propped on her knee, and her chin resting in the palm of her hand, she listened to the flood of sound about her; the hum and buzz that came from garden and orchard, from field and meadow; thousands of tiny voices, rising and falling and rising again, as they told their fascinating life stories, from every leaf and twig and grass blade. “They are talking just as fast as they can,” Ruth said again, “but I don’t know what they are saying. Oh! if I only did. Why don’t people learn their language instead of German and French and lots of other old things that aren’t any good? It would be ever so much nicer, and they could find out so many wonderful things, couldn’t they, Belinda?” But, as usual, Belinda only stared at Ruth, and said nothing. [Illustration: “‘SOMETIMES IT SEEMS AS IF IT MUST BE FAIRYLAND ALL AROUND, ONLY I’M DEAF’”]