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Tale of Chirpy Cricket

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<h2>XII</h2> <h3>AN UNDERGROUND CHAT</h3></div> Chirpy Cricket was glad of one thing. Mr. Mole Cricket talked quite pleasantly, for all he looked so frightful. When he dug his way through the dirt in Farmer Green’s garden and broke into the crack where Chirpy was hiding he had given Chirpy a terrible start. “If you’re a cousin of mine—as you say—it’s strange that I’ve never happened to meet you before,” Chirpy told the newcomer. “Not at all! Not at all!” Mr. Mole Cricket said. “I spend all my time underground. I’ve never been up in the open.” 53 “Don’t you go out at night?” Chirpy asked him. “Never!” Mr. Mole Cricket declared. “I’ve lived my whole life in the dirt. And I like it too well to leave it.” Chirpy Cricket thought his cousin was the queerest person he had ever met. “How do you get anything to eat?” he inquired. Mr. Mole Cricket seemed to consider that an odd question. “Bless you!” he exclaimed. “There’s everything to eat in the ground—everything anybody could possibly want. Wherever I tunnel I find tender roots. You know Farmer Green grows fine vegetables here. Indeed that’s one reason I live under his garden.” “If that’s one reason, what’s another?” Chirpy Cricket asked him. For Chirpy couldn’t help being curious about this new-found 54 cousin of his, who had such strange ways and who was even stranger to look upon. He was obliging enough—was Mr. Mole Cricket. He was quite willing to answer any and all questions. It may be that he was glad of the chance to talk with somebody. Certainly it seemed to Chirpy Cricket that his cousin led a very lonely life. He explained to Chirpy that it was easy to dig in the garden, because its soil was loose. The ploughing in the spring, and the harrowing, as well as the hoeing that Farmer Green’s hired man did during the summer, kept the earth in fine condition for tunnelling. Of course, living beneath the surface as he did, Mr. Mole Cricket had no way of knowing why the garden soil was so nicely stirred up. He only knew that it was so. And that was quite enough for him. 55 Chirpy Cricket said that it was all very interesting to hear about. But he knew that he shouldn’t care to follow Mr. Mole Cricket’s manner of living. “I love to fiddle,” he said. “I simply must go abroad every pleasant night and make music.” “But you don’t need to leave the dirt to fiddle!” Mr. Mole Cricket exclaimed. “I’m musical too. I often fiddle down in my house. I don’t know a better way of passing the time, when a person’s not digging or eating.” “Won’t you play for me now?” Chirpy Cricket asked him. Mr. Mole Cricket was more than willing to oblige. He began to fiddle at once. And the tune he played was as strange as he was. Chirpy Cricket did not like it at all. It seemed to him very mournful, a sort of sad, sad air, as if Mr. Mole Cricket 56 were bewailing his dismal life beneath the garden. But of course Chirpy was too polite to tell that to his cousin. And when Mr. Mole Cricket asked him how he liked the tune, Chirpy replied that it was very, very interesting. <hr class='major' /> <div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> 57 <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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