Part 9

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And so Miss Katy’s ball came off, and the performers kept it up from sundown till daybreak, so that it seemed as if every leaf in the forest were alive. The Katy-dids and the Mosquitoes, and the Locusts, and a full orchestra of Crickets made the air perfectly vibrate, insomuch that old Parson Too-Whit, who was preaching a Thursday evening lecture to a very small audience, announced to his hearers that he should certainly write a discourse against dancing for the next weekly occasion.

The good doctor was even with his word in the matter, and gave out some very sonorous discourses, without in the least stopping the round of gaieties kept up by these dissipated Katy-dids, which ran on, night after night, till the celebrated Jack Frost epidemic, which occurred somewhere about the first of September.

Poor Miss Katy, with her flimsy green satin and point-lace, was one of the first victims, and fell from the bough in company with a sad shower of last year’s leaves. The worthy Cricket family, however, avoided Jack Frost by emigrating in time to the chimney-corner of a nice little cottage that had been built in the wood that summer.

There good old Mr. and Mrs. Cricket, with sprightly Miss Keziah and her brothers and sisters, found a warm and welcome home; and when the storm howled without, and lashed the poor naked trees, the Crickets on the warm hearth would chirp out cheery welcome to papa as he came in from the snowy path, or mamma as she sat at her work-basket.

“Cheep, cheep, cheep!” little Freddy would say. “Mamma, who is it says ‘cheep’?”

“Dear Freddy, it’s our own dear little cricket, who loves us and comes to sing to us when the snow is on the ground.”

So when poor Miss Katy-did’s satin and lace were all swept away, the warm home-talents of the Crickets made for them a welcome refuge.

MOTHER MAGPIE’S MISCHIEF.

OLD Mother Magpie was about the busiest character in the forest. But you must know that there is a great difference between being busy and being industrious. One may be very busy all the time, and yet not in the least industrious; and this was the case with Mother Magpie.

She was always full of everybody’s business but her own—up and down, here and there, everywhere but in her own nest, knowing everyone’s affairs, telling what everybody had been doing or ought to do, and ready to cast her advice gratis at every bird and beast of the woods.

Now she bustled up to the parsonage at the top of the oak-tree, to tell old Parson Too-Whit what she thought he ought to preach for his next sermon, and how dreadful the morals of the parish were becoming. Then, having perfectly bewildered the poor old gentleman, who was always sleepy of a Monday morning, Mother Magpie would take a peep into Mrs. Oriole’s nest, sit chattering on a bough above, and pour forth floods of advice, which, poor little Mrs. Oriole used to say to her husband, bewildered her more than a hard north-east storm.

“Depend upon it, my dear,” Mother Magpie would say, “that this way of building your nest, swinging like an old empty stocking from a bough, isn’t at all the thing. I never built one so in my life, and I never have headaches. Now you complain always that your head aches whenever I call upon you. It’s all on account of this way of swinging and swaying about in such an absurd manner.”

“But, my dear,” piped Mrs. Oriole timidly, “the Orioles always have built in this manner, and it suits our constitution.”

“A fiddle on your constitution! How can you tell what agrees with your constitution unless you try? You own you are not well; you are subject to headaches; and every physician will tell you that a tilting motion disorders the stomach and acts upon the brain. Ask old Dr. Kite. I was talking with him about your case only yesterday, and says he, ‘Mrs. Magpie, I perfectly agree with you.’”

“But my husband prefers this style of building.”

“That’s only because he isn’t properly instructed. Pray, did you ever attend Dr. Kite’s lectures on the nervous system?”

“No, I have no time to attend lectures. Who would sit on the eggs?”

“Why, your husband, to be sure; don’t he take his turn in sitting? If he don’t, he ought to. I shall speak to him about it. My husband always sits regularly half the time, that I may have time to go about and exercise.”

“O Mrs. Magpie, pray don’t speak to my husband; he will think I’ve been complaining.”

“No, no, he won’t. Let me alone. I understand just how to say the thing. I’ve advised hundreds of young husbands in my day, and I never gave offence.”

“But I tell you, Mrs. Magpie, I don’t want any interference between my husband and me, and I will not have it,” says Mrs. Oriole, with her little round eyes flashing with indignation.

“Don’t put yourself in a passion, my dear; the more you talk, the more sure I am that your nervous system is running down, or you wouldn’t forget good manners in this way. You’d better take my advice, for I understand just what to do,”—and away sails Mother Magpie; and presently young Oriole comes home all in a flutter.

“I say, my dear, if you will persist in gossiping over our private family matters with that old Mother Magpie—”

“My dear, I don’t gossip. She comes and bores me to death with talking, and then goes off and mistakes what she has been saying for what I said.”

“But you must cut her.”

“I try to, all I can; but she won’t be cut.”

“It’s enough to make a bird swear,” said Tommy Oriole.