do to preserve the family?'

"'Easy enough to do that,' said Dr. Frog. 'Sleep days and sing at
night as our family do; little chance we would have if we came out and
sang in the daytime.'

"So that is the reason we sleep days and sing nights, so the birds and
chickens and bug-eating animals cannot catch us.

"Of course, sometimes they do get a cricket, but it is always one who
has stayed out too late or gotten up too early, usually a very young
cricket who thinks he knows more than his mother or father.

"But the good little crickets who mind and get up when they are called
are pretty sure to live to a good old age."

When Madam Cricket stopped talking all the little crickets stood
looking at her with very curious expressions on their faces.

"We are good little crickets, aren't we, mother?" they asked.

"Of course you are. Here you are all ready to go out and sing and the
sun has just dropped behind the hill," she said.

"Chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp," they sang as they scampered after their
mother out into the night.

THE PLAYROOM WEDDING

[Illustration: The Playroom Wedding]

Paper Doll had been the maid of honor, but she did not at all approve
of the match. "It will never be a happy marriage," she told Teddy Bear
the night of the wedding. "Such marriages never are. How I should
feel married to a man who wore dresses."

Yes, he did look as if he wore a dress, for he was a Japanese gentleman
doll, you see, and when he came to the playroom to live everybody,
including French Doll Marie, thought he was very queer looking.

But after a while they became used to Takeo, for that was his name, and
when the little mistress announced that Marie was to marry Takeo she
did not make the least objection.

"What difference does it make?" she said to Frieda, the Dutch doll, who
lived next to her. "I suppose I shall have to marry someone, and truly
I could never live with Jumping Jack; that fellow makes me so nervous."

"He seems very quiet," said Frieda Doll, meaning Takeo, "and perhaps
you can get him to dress in men's clothes after you are married."

"Yes, he is quiet and I cannot understand a word he says, so we shall
not quarrel," said Marie Doll.

And so they were married. Jack-in-the-box was the minister, because
the little mistress thought he stood better than anyone else. She put
a black cape on him and a white collar, and Jack behaved in the most
dignified manner.

Little Paper Doll wore a