"Those crickets sound like pop-guns," said the old man, slipping more cookies into the oven and setting a pan of biscuits on a shelf by the hearth.
"Oh, please," said little Hope, "we've got bushels of them!"
"Now we'll let those cookies bake while we 'tend to the fiddlers. Are four pans of cookies enough for five children?"
"Now, Hope, let me have your bushel box. H'm," he murmured, peeping in, "all dressed for the party. What color?"
"Black, too," said Betty; "and on a few," she added, "there's a stripe or a weeny spot of color."
"Oho!" exclaimed the old man, "what have we here?" He took a pale little creature from Hope's basket.
"Why, it's white and green tinted," called Jimmie. "That isn't a cricket."
"Isn't it? Well, it's a first cousin which lives in the trees and loves its tree home so much, like the sensible little fellow it is, that it sings 'Tr-e-e-e, tr-e-e-e,' as fast as it can trill all summer long. But it is very harmful to the tree, because when egg-laying time comes it cuts a long slit in the trees in which to lay its eggs. Just a minute!" The old man shifted the position of the baker, and out came such a good odor of cookies that all the children sniffed with delight. "Here, Jack," he said, to a brown little fellow in ragged clothes and bare feet, "you have a singer in your box."
"Briers aren't good for bare legs, are they? Never mind, your crickets won't eat one another."
"Yes, crickets are cannibals, like some other insects, and they frequently eat a near relation or a friend, as the people in the Fiji Islands used to do. This is a nice brown little chap, Jack. Do you know how he makes his music?"
[Illustration: _A._ File on wing of cricket. _B._ Scraper on wing of cricket. _C._ Mrs. Cricket.]
"Why, I suppose," said the boy, "he opens his mouth the way Mr. Tucker does in the church choir, and--"
There was a shout of laughter from Jimmie, who was sure he knew a great deal.
"Well," said the guide to Jim, "then how does it make its music, since you know?"
"I don't know, sir," stammered Jimmie, who found he didn't know as much as he thought he did.
"When Mr. Cricket sings," went on the hermit, "it lifts its two wing covers so that the edges meet like the pointed roof of a house. Then your little fiddler, Jack, rubs one edge against the other."