The Tale of Chirpy Cricket

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He had dug himself a hole in the ground, under some straw that was scattered near the barn; and every night, from midsummer on, he came out and made merry.

But in the daytime he was usually quiet as a mouse, sitting inside his hole and doing nothing at all except to wait patiently until it should be dark again, so that he might crawl forth from his hiding place and take up his music where he had left it unfinished the night before.

Somehow he always knew exactly where to begin. Although he carried no sheets of music with him, he never had to stop and wonder what note to begin on, for the reason that he always fiddled on the same one.

When rude people asked Chirpy Cricket—as they did now and then—why he didn’t change his tune, he always replied that a person couldn’t change anything without taking time. And since he expected to make only a short stay in Pleasant Valley he didn’t want to fritter away any precious moments.

Chirpy Cricket’s neighbors soon noticed that he carried his fiddle with him everywhere he went. And the curious ones asked him a question. “Why”—they inquired—“why are you forever taking your fiddle with you?”

And Chirpy Cricket reminded them that the summer would be gone almost before anybody knew it. He said that when he wanted to play a tune he didn’t intend to waste any valuable time hunting for his fiddle.

Now, all that was true enough. But it was just as true that he couldn’t have left his fiddle at home anyhow. Chirpy made his music with his two wings. He rubbed a file-like ridge of one on a rough part of the other. So his fiddle—if you could call it by that name—just naturally had to go wherever he did.

Cr-r-r-i! cr-r-r-i! cr-r-r-i! When that shrill sound, all on one note, rang out in the night everybody that heard it knew that Chirpy Cricket was sawing out his odd music. And the warmer the night the faster he played. He liked warm weather. Somehow it seemed to make him feel especially lively.

People who wanted to be disagreeable were always remarking in Chirpy Cricket’s hearing that they hoped there would be an early frost. They thought of course he would know they were tired of his music and wished he would keep still.

But such speeches only made him fiddle the faster. “An early frost!” he would exclaim. “I must hurry if I’m to finish my summer’s fiddling.”

Now, Chirpy had dozens and dozens of relations living in holes of their own, in the farmyard or the fields. And the gentlemen were all musical. Like him, they were fiddlers. Somehow fiddling ran in their family. So on warm nights, during the last half of the summer, there was sure to be a Crickets’ concert.

Sometimes it seemed to Johnnie Green, who lived in the farmhouse, as if Chirpy Cricket and his relations were trying to drown the songs of the musical Frog family, over in the swamp.

Of course Chirpy Cricket didn’t spend all his time merely sitting quietly in his hole, in the daytime—and fiddling every night. Of course he had to eat. And each night he was in the habit of creeping out of his hole and gathering spears of grass in Farmer Green’s yard, which he carried home with him.

He called that “doing his marketing.” And it was lucky for him that he liked grass, there was so much of it to be had. All he had to do was to step outside his door; and there it was, all around him! It made housekeeping an easy matter and left him plenty of time, every night, to fiddle and frolic.

Somehow Chirpy could never go from one place to another in a slow, sober walk. He always moved by leaps, as if he felt too gay to plod along like Daddy Longlegs, for instance. Chirpy himself often remarked that he hadn’t time to move slowly. And almost before he had finished speaking, as likely as not he would jump into the air and alight some distance away. It was all done so quickly that a person could scarcely see how it happened. But Chirpy Cricket said it was as easy as anything. And having leaped like that, often he would begin to shuffle his wings together the moment he landed on the ground, thereby making his shrill music.

Many of his neighbors declared that he believed a short life and a merry one was the best kind. And when they thought of Timothy Turtle, who was so old that nobody could even guess his age, and was so disagreeable and snappish that every one kept out of his way, the neighbors decided that possibly Chirpy Cricket’s way was the better of the two. Anyhow, there was no doubt that Timothy Turtle believed in a long life and a grumpy one.

All Chirpy’s relations were of the same mind as he. They acted as if they would rather make the nights ring with their music than do anything else. And Johnnie Green said one evening, when he heard Solomon Owl hooting over in the hemlock woods, that it was lucky there weren’t as many Owls as there were Crickets in the valley.

If there were hundreds—or maybe thousands—of Owls, and they all hooted at the same time, there’d be no sleeping for anybody. At least that was Johnnie Green’s opinion. And it does seem a reasonable one.

Chirpy Cricket’s nearest relations all looked exactly like him. Everybody said that the Crickets bore a strong family resemblance to one another. But there were others—more distant cousins—that were quite unlike Chirpy. There were the Mole Crickets, who stayed in the ground and never, never came to the surface; and there were the Tree Crickets, who lived in the trees and fiddled re-teat! re-teat re-teat! until you might have thought they would get tired of their ditty.

But they never did. They seemed to like their music as much as Chirpy Cricket liked his cr-r-r-i! cr-r-r-i! cr-r-r-i!

The farmyard was not the first place that Chirpy Cricket chose for his home. Before he dug himself a hole under the straw near the barn he had settled in the pasture. Although the cows seemed to think that the grass in the pasture belonged to them alone, Chirpy decided that there ought to be enough for him too, if he didn’t eat too much.

He had been living in the pasture some time before he discovered that a very musical family had come to live next door to him. They were known as the Bumblebees; and there were dozens of them huddled into a hole long since deserted by some Woodchucks that had moved to other quarters.

Although they were said to be great workers—most of them!—the Bumblebee family found plenty of time to make music. They were very fond of humming. And in the beginning Chirpy Cricket thought their humming a pleasant sound to hear, as he sat in his dark hole during the daytime.

“They’re having a party in there!” he said, the first time he noticed the droning music. “No doubt”—he added—“no doubt they’re enjoying a dance!”

The thought made him feel so jolly that if it had only been dark out of doors he would have left his home and leaped about in the pasture.

All that day, between naps, Chirpy could hear the humming. “It’s certainly a long party!” he exclaimed, when he awoke late in the afternoon and heard the Bumblebee family still making music. But about sunset their humming stopped. And Chirpy Cricket couldn’t help feeling a bit disappointed, because he had hoped to enjoy a dance himself, to the Bumblebees’ music when he left his home that evening.

A little later he told his favorite cousin about the party that had lasted all day. And Chirpy said that he supposed the Bumblebees had only one party a year, because he understood that most of them were great workers, and he didn’t believe they would care to spend a whole day humming, very often.

The favorite cousin gave Chirpy a strange look in the moonlight. And then he began to fiddle, making no remark whatsoever. He thought there was no use wasting words on a fine, warm night—just the sort of night for a lively cr-r-r-i! cr-r-r-i! cr-r-r-i!

Chirpy Cricket lost no time in getting his own fiddle to working. And each of them really believed he was himself making most of the music that was heard in the pasture.

Once in a while Chirpy Cricket and his cousin stopped to eat a little grass, or paused to carry a few spears into their holes, because they liked to have something to nibble on in the daytime. But they always returned to their fiddling again; and they never stopped for good until almost morning.

But at last Chirpy Cricket announced that he would make no more music that night.

“I’ll go home now,” he said. “I expect to have a good day’s rest. And I’ll meet you at this same spot to-morrow night for a little fiddling.”

“I’ll be here,” his favorite cousin promised.

It was just beginning to grow light in the east when Chirpy Cricket crawled into his hole in the pasture, after his fiddling with his favorite cousin. Having spent a good deal of the previous day in listening to the humming of the musical Bumblebee family, who lived next door to him, Chirpy was more than ready to rest.

All was quiet at that hour of the morning, except for the creaky fiddling of a relation of Chirpy’s who didn’t appear to know that it was time to go home. But Chirpy Cricket didn’t mind that. Fiddling never bothered him.

He never knew whether he had fallen asleep or not. He may have been only day-dreaming. Anyhow, all at once he noticed a rumbling sound, which grew louder and louder as he listened.

“They’re at it again!” Chirpy Cricket exclaimed. “The Bumblebee family have begun their music. I do hope they aren’t going to have another all-day party, for I don’t want my rest disturbed.”

But he soon found that the Bumblebees were not tuning up for nothing. Before long they were humming and buzzing away as if they hadn’t a care in the world.

“I declare,”—Chirpy cried, although there was no one but himself to hear—“I declare, they’re dancing again! It can’t be long after sunrise, either. And no doubt they won’t stop till sunset.”

He began to feel very much upset. He could understand why people should want to make music by night, and hop about in a lively fashion, too. But by day—ah! that was another matter.

Being unable to rest, on account of the uproar from the Bumblebees’ house, Chirpy crept out of his door and stood blinking in the pasture. Soon he noticed a plump person sitting on a head of clover which the cows had overlooked. Chirpy couldn’t see clearly who he was, coming up out of the darkness as he had. But he was glad there was somebody to talk to, anyhow.

“Good morning!” he greeted the person on the clover-top, adding in a lower tone, “They’re a queer family—those Bumblebees!”

To his great dismay, the person to whom he had spoken began to buzz. And leaping nearer him, in order to see him better, Chirpy Cricket discovered that he had been talking to Buster Bumblebee! Buster was a blundering, good-natured chap. And to Chirpy’s relief, instead of getting angry he merely laughed.

“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” Chirpy told him. “If I’m disagreeable this morning, it’s because I need a good rest. And your family’s humming disturbs me.”

“Why do you think we’re queer?” Buster asked him.

“Don’t you call it a bit odd—having a dance at this time of day?”

“Bless you! They’re not dancing in there!” Buster Bumblebee cried. “That’s the workers storing away the honey. They’re always buzzing like that. Perhaps you didn’t know that our honey-makers can’t work without being noisy. To tell the truth, they wake me every morning. And often I’d rather sleep.”

“Will they keep this racket up all summer?” Chirpy inquired.

“On all pleasant days!” Buster Bumblebee said.

“Then,” said Chirpy Cricket, “I’ll have to move to a quieter neighborhood. This humming every day would soon drive me frantic.”

“I don’t blame you,” Buster Bumblebee told him. “I’ve often felt that way myself.”

Chirpy Cricket preferred the dark to the day. He was quite different from Jennie Junebug and Mehitable Moth, who dearly loved a light at night, and would dash joyously into any they saw.

There was only one light that Chirpy Cricket was always glad to see. He thought Freddie Firefly’s flashes looked very cheerful as they twinkled about the farmyard. And he often told Freddie that he would be willing to linger above ground in the daytime now and then, if only Freddie would stay with him and make merry with his light.

But Freddie Firefly knew enough to decline the invitation. He was well aware that nobody could see his light when the sun was shining. And he was afraid that other merrymakers in the farmyard might make matters far from merry for him. For Freddie Firefly feared all birds. At night he used his trusty light to frighten Mr. Nighthawk or Willie Whip-poor-will. But he didn’t intend to run any risk in the daytime, with Jolly Robin or Rusty Wren.

Chirpy Cricket soon saw that it was useless to try to get Freddie Firefly to enjoy an outing with him by daylight. So every night he spent as much time as he could in Freddie’s company.

If the truth were known, Chirpy Cricket wished that he had a light of his own. And he couldn’t help hoping that sooner or later Freddie Firefly would offer to lend him his.

Night after night the two met in the farmyard. But nothing seemed further from Freddie Firefly’s thoughts than lending his brilliant greenish-white light to Chirpy Cricket, or to any one else.

But Chirpy simply couldn’t keep his eyes off that wonderful flash-light when Freddie Firefly was in the neighborhood. People began to notice that he even stopped fiddling sometimes, to stare at Freddie Firefly.

At last Chirpy Cricket made up his mind that if he was ever going to borrow the light he would have to ask Freddie for it. Several nights passed before he could think of a good reason for using it. But after a while he thought of a fine one. So he went straight to Freddie Firefly.

“I’m going to see Miss Christabel Cricket home after the music is over tonight,” Chirpy said, “and I’ve been wondering if you’d be willing to do me a favor.”

“Why, certainly!” Freddie Firefly told him.

“Will you loan me your light?” Chirpy asked him. “You know there’ll be no moon when it’s time to go home. And your light would be a great help to me, for Miss Christabel lives beyond the barnyard fence.”

For just a few moments Freddy Firefly appeared greatly surprised. To tell the truth, Chirpy’s request almost took his breath away. And while he recovered himself he forgot to flash his light—a most unusual oversight.

But Freddie was no person to disappoint a friend. Besides, he had just said, “Why, certainly!”

Really, there was nothing for him to do but to say the same thing again.

Chirpy Cricket never fiddled faster than he did that night. Somehow he had a notion that the faster he fiddled the more quickly the night would pass. For Freddie Firefly had promised to loan Chirpy his light, because Chirpy needed it when he saw Miss Christabel Cricket to her home beyond the barnyard fence. Chirpy was going to see her safely to her door when the night’s concert was ended. And he could hardly wait until the time came when he would flash that wonderful light in the eyes of all his friends.

“I hope you won’t go dancing across the meadow tonight,” he remarked anxiously to Freddie Firefly. “You might wander into the swamp and get lost.”

“Oh, there’s no danger of that!” Freddie assured him.

“If you stumbled into the wet swamp you might put your light out,” Chirpy Cricket warned him.

But Freddie Firefly laughed and told him not to worry.

“I always enjoy at least one dance in the meadow each night,” he explained. “They’re expecting me over there now. And I don’t want to disappoint them.”

“No!” Chirpy answered. “And neither do you want to disappoint me. So please don’t fail to be on hand when the music’s finished.”

After telling Chirpy that he wouldn’t fail him, Freddie Firefly flitted away. But in spite of what he had said Chirpy Cricket couldn’t help feeling nervous and uneasy. And he fiddled so fast that the other fiddlers kept complaining. They said he wasn’t playing in time.

Chirpy Cricket was too well-mannered to contradict them. But he had his own opinion, which he kept to himself. He thought his companions were out of time. “Goodness!” he exclaimed under his breath. “I near heard such slow fiddling in all my life!”

There was another way, too, in which Chirpy annoyed the others. He kept asking them—first one and then another—what time it was. And of course nobody wants to stop and look at his watch when he is fiddling.

At last one of his cousins told him, in answer to his question, that it was time to stop talking and pay attention to the music.

After that Chirpy Cricket tried to be patient. But it was hard not to be restless. And he kept leaping into the air, hoping to get a glimpse of Freddie Firefly’s twinkling light. For it seemed to him that Freddie would never return from the meadow.

At last the fiddlers stopped playing, one after another; for the night was going fast. The Cricket family always liked to be home before daylight.

Chirpy had almost given up hope of seeing Freddie Firefly. But to his great delight Freddie came skipping up just as Chirpy stood before Miss Christabel Cricket, whom he expected to see to her home.

“I’m glad you’ve come!” Chirpy greeted him. “I’ll take your light now. And I’ll return it to you to-morrow night.”

“Oh! That would be too much trouble for you,” Freddie Firefly said. “I’ll go right along with you and your young lady. And after I’ve lighted her home I’ll do the same thing for you.”

“Oh! That would be too much trouble for you,” Chirpy Cricket objected. “Let me take the light, please!” He certainly didn’t want Freddie Firefly tagging along with Miss Christabel Cricket and himself.

Of course, Freddie Firefly couldn’t give Chirpy his light. It was just as much a part of him as his head. And since Chirpy Cricket began to get excited, and said again and again that the light had been promised him, in the end Freddie had to explain everything.

It was a great disappointment to Chirpy Cricket. He had expected to have wonderful fun, flashing Freddie Firefly’s light.

But Miss Christabel Cricket did not seem to mind in the least.

“You oughtn’t to blame Freddie Firefly for not loaning his light,” she said. “You know you wouldn’t let him take your fiddle.”

Well, Chirpy Cricket hadn’t thought of that. And he had to admit that what she said was true.

And just then the sun peeped over Blue Mountain. So everybody hurried home alone, after all.

There were enough night noises before Chirpy Cricket came to live in the farmyard. What with Solomon Owl’s hooting, his cousin Simon Screecher’s quavering call, and the musical Frog’s family’s concerts in Cedar Swamp, it was a wonder that Johnnie Green ever managed to fall asleep. The Katydids alone were almost enough to drive anybody frantic—if he let himself listen to them—with their everlasting cry of Katy did, Katy did; she did, she did.

Johnnie Green himself said he wished the Crickets had gone somewhere else to spend the summer. At least, he thought they might play some other tune besides cr-r-r-i! cr-r-r-i! cr-r-r-i! over and over again. If they would only fiddle “Yankee Doodle” now and then he said he wouldn’t mind lying awake a while to listen to it.

Perhaps Chirpy Cricket heard what Johnnie Green said. Maybe he wanted to punish him. Anyhow, he crept into the farmhouse one evening and found his way into Johnnie Green’s chamber, where he hid in a gaping crack behind the baseboard. And that very night, as soon as Johnnie Green put out his light and jumped into bed, Chirpy Cricket began to fiddle for him.

Johnnie had been sleepy. But the moment Chirpy Cricket began fiddling right there in his room he became wide awake. He had had no idea how loudly one of the Cricket family could play his cr-r-r-i! cr-r-r-i! cr-r-r-i! indoors. The high, shrill sound was piercing. It rang in Johnnie’s ears and drowned the muffled concert of the fields and swamp which the light breeze bore through the window.

For a few minutes Johnnie lay still. And then he sat up in bed. “I’ll have to get up and find that fellow,” he said. “If I don’t, he’ll keep me awake.”

The moment he stirred, the fiddling stopped short. Johnnie was glad of that. And once more he laid his head upon his pillow. But in a few moments that cr-r-r-i! cr-r-r-i! rang out again.

Then Johnnie Green tried several remedies. He shook the bed. He knocked over a chair. He caught up a shoe and threw it toward a corner of the room, whence the sound seemed to come. And then he threw the other shoe.

Every time Johnnie Green made a noise Chirpy Cricket stopped fiddling. And if Johnnie had had enough shoes no doubt he could have kept Chirpy from making any more music that night. But of course Johnnie couldn’t have slept any, if he had done that. Besides, he would have kept the whole family awake, too. He thought of that after he had hurled the second shoe. For his father called up the stairs and asked him what was the matter.

“There’s an old Cricket in my room!” Johnnie explained. “He’s keeping me awake.”

“I should think you were keeping him awake,” said Farmer Green. “Get up and look for him if you must.... But don’t let him bite you!”

“You wouldn’t joke if this old Cricket was in your room,” Johnnie grumbled.

He did not grumble often. But he had had a long, hard day, swimming in the mill-pond and climbing apple trees. And he wanted to go to sleep.

Johnnie Green thought it was no time to crack jokes.

Johnnie Green knew that he could never find the Cricket in the dark. So he crawled out of bed and lighted a candle, blinking a few moments in its flickering flame.

From his hiding place in the crack of the baseboard, in a corner of Johnnie Green’s chamber, Chirpy Cricket saw the gleam of the candle. And he wondered whether it might be a relation of Freddie Firefly. It seemed to have a trick of moving about in a jerky fashion, as if it didn’t know where it was going and didn’t greatly care, so long as it was on the move.

Chirpy Cricket kept still as a mouse then. He soon saw that the bearer of the bright light was quite unlike Freddie Firefly, in one way. He made a tremendous racket, knocking over almost everything in the room.

In a few minutes a voice called up the stairway again. “Is the Cricket chasing you?” it asked. It was Farmer Green, speaking to Johnnie.

“Don’t tease me!” Johnnie Green cried. “Come up and help me find him!”

So Farmer Green climbed the stairs and looked into Johnnie’s room and laughed.

“Maybe I ought to have brought the old shotgun,” he said. “I’d hate to have a Cricket jump at me.”

Johnnie managed to grin at that. He was so wide awake that he no longer felt like grumbling.

“The trouble with this Cricket is that he won’t jump,” he told his father. “I can’t tell where he is, because he keeps still whenever I move. But when the light’s out and everything’s quiet he makes a terrible noise.”

“That’s a trick Crickets have,” Farmer Green observed. “And I must say that if I were a Cricket I’d act the same way.”

Of course Chirpy Cricket heard everything that was said. And he couldn’t help thinking that Farmer Green was a very sensible person. “I dare say he’d be a famous fiddler if he belonged to our family,” Chirpy told himself. And for a moment or two he was tempted to play a tune for Farmer Green. But he thought better of the notion at once. He remembered that Farmer Green had climbed the stairs to hunt for him. And Chirpy squeezed himself further into the crack where he was hiding until he was so huddled up that he couldn’t have fiddled if he had wanted to.

Though they looked carefully, neither Johnnie nor his father could find him. And at last they had to admit that it was useless to search any longer.

“What shall I do?” Johnnie wailed. “As soon as I put out the light and get into bed he’ll begin chirping again.”

“In such cases,” Farmer Green answered wisely, “there’s only one thing to do.”

“What’s that?” Johnnie inquired hopefully.

“All you can do,” said Farmer Green, “is to come downstairs and have something to eat.”

Now, that may seem a strange remedy. But somehow it just suited Johnnie Green. He pattered barefooted down the stairs. And later, when he went to bed again, and Chirpy Cricket began to chirp once more, all Johnnie Green said was this:

“Sing away—little Tommy Tucker! You may not know it, but you sang for my supper!”

And the next moment, Johnnie Green was sound asleep.

Chirpy Cricket liked his home in Farmer Green’s yard. During the long summer days he thought it very cheerful to rest in his dark hole in the ground. He liked the darkness of his home; he liked its warmth, too. For in pleasant weather the sun beat down upon the straw-littered ground above him and gave him plenty of heat, while on gray days the straw blanket kept his house cosy. And it never occurred to Chirpy Cricket that there was anything odd in having a blanket over his house instead of over himself.

Nothing ever really disturbed Chirpy Cricket after he settled in the farmyard. To be sure, he had a few frights at first. Now and then the earth trembled in a terrible fashion. But that happened only when Johnnie Green led old Ebenezer, or some other horse, to the watering-trough, passing right over Chirpy’s home. And Chirpy had soon learned that he was in no danger.

Then at other times he heard an odd tearing and scratching, as if some giant had discovered Chirpy’s doorway and meant to dig him out of his hiding place. By peeping slyly out he discovered at last the cause of those fearful sounds. It was only the hens looking for something to eat—a bit of grain amid the straw, or perhaps an angleworm. Chirpy never left his house when he heard the hens at work. He had no wish to offer himself as a tidbit. And he felt quite safe down in his home, for he was quick to learn that the hens were no diggers. They could only scratch the surface of the ground. So, in time, he used to laugh when he heard them. And now and then he would even fiddle a bit, as if to say to them, “Here I am! Come and get me if you can!”

The sound of fiddling, coming from beneath their feet, always puzzled the hens. They would stop scratching and cock their heads on one side, to listen. And they tried to look very knowing. But they were really the most stupid of all the creatures in the farmyard. If they had only been as wise as Farmer Green’s cat they would have kept still and waited and watched. And sooner or later they would have given Chirpy Cricket the surprise of his life, when he came crawling out of his hole to get a few blades of grass for his supper.

But even if the hens had thought of such a plan they never could have kept their minds upon it long enough to carry it out. So perhaps it was no wonder that Chirpy Cricket got the idea into his head that he was safe from everybody. Sometimes, when he was dozing, even the footsteps of old Ebenezer failed to rouse him.

But there came a day when Chirpy Cricket awoke with a great start. Something had touched his long feelers. Something had come right down into his hole and was prodding him.

He thought it must be a hen. And he did not laugh. No! Nor did he fiddle!