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Tale of Kiddie Katydid

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<h3>LEAPER THE LOCUST IS WORRIED</h3> Kiddie Katydid looked on happily while Leaper the Locust struggled to free himself from the clutches of the messenger. But Leaper was no match for the stranger. In the end he had to accept the message as his own. "Now," said the stranger, "your cousin and his family will reach here by to-morrow at the latest. So you'd better be making arrangements to welcome him. "Remember! Have plenty of food ready! I'll warn you now that if your cousin's family have to go hungry they'll be pretty angry with you."[100] "I don't believe I need to worry," Leaper the Locust remarked carelessly. "If they don't like what I have they can go without, for all I care." Though the stranger said nothing in reply to that, he glared at Leaper in a threatening fashion which haunted him all the rest of the night. "I wish I had never heard of this horrid message!" he exclaimed at last. "I wish I had never laid claim to it. It's going to cause me trouble, I know!" The more he worried over the visit of his unknown cousin, the more Leaper the Locust wished he were safely rid of the whole affair. "I know what I'll do!" he cried at last. "I'll disguise myself. I'll make my horns so long that people will think I'm somebody else." So he set to work. And biting off some[101] slender grasses, he bound them to his stubby horns with threads from a spider's web which he found in the pasture. Then he looked at himself in a pool. "I'm a Long-horn now!" he exclaimed. And he was greatly pleased at the sight of himself—he who had once scoffed at Kiddie Katydid's horns and advised him to have them trimmed. Meanwhile the strange messenger had disappeared. It was said that he had gone to meet the other travellers and guide them to their cousin, Leaper the Locust. And there was great excitement throughout Pleasant Valley. A good many of the field people stopped at Farmer Green's dooryard and told Kiddie Katydid that they thought he had made a mistake. "You might have had the honor of receiving the guests," they said.[102] "No, thank you!" he replied to all such remarks. "I'm willing enough to let Leaper the Locust do the honors. And unless I'm much mistaken, he's trembling in his shoes this very moment." Then the field people would shake their heads and say that they didn't understand. Wasn't everybody glad to have company once in a while? And wouldn't it be a pleasure to talk with strangers who came from some far-off place, and ask them how the crops were where they lived, and what the weather was? But Kiddie Katydid only said mysteriously, "Wait a bit! And if you want strangers to talk to, there'll soon be plenty of them in this neighborhood, if I'm not mistaken." Well, Kiddie's neighbors couldn't imagine what he meant. They made a good many guesses. But there was always[103] somebody to point out some flaw and upset every calculation. So at last everybody stopped guessing and admitted that he had no idea as to what Kiddie Katydid had in mind. It was just another one of his secrets. And people might as well wait patiently to see what happened. Even Solomon Owl agreed to that. "Time will tell!" he said with a wise nod of his head.[104] <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <h2>XXII</h2> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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