have nothing else to do but to gossip with each other; but
they never ask why."

After that they went on in silence a good way except that the
grasshopper cried "S----s" to his friends in the grass as he passed, and
said good-morning also to a mole who peeped out for a moment.

"Why don't you hop straight?" said Bevis, presently. "It seems to me
that you hop first one side and then the other, and go in such a zig-zag
fashion it will take us hours to reach the brook."

"How very stupid you are," said the grasshopper. "If you go straight of
course you can only see just what is under your feet, but if you go
first this way and then that, then you see everything. You are nearly as
silly as the ants, who never see anything beautiful all their lives. Be
sure you have nothing to do with the ants, Bevis; they are a mean,
wretched, miserly set, quite contemptible and beneath notice. Now I go
everywhere all round the field, and spend my time searching for lovely
things; sometimes I find flowers, and sometimes the butterflies come
down into the grass and tell me the news, and I am so fond of the
sunshine, I sing to it all day long. Tell me, now, is there anything so
beautiful as the sunshine and the blue sky, and the green grass, and the
velvet and blue and spotted butterflies, and the trees which cast such a
pleasant shadow and talk so sweetly, and the brook which is always
running? I should like to listen to it for a thousand years."

"I like you," said Bevis; "jump into my hand, and I will carry you." He
held his hand out flat, and in a second up sprang the grasshopper, and
alighted on his palm, and told him the way to go, and thus they went
together merrily.

"Are you sure the ants are so very stupid and wicked?" asked Bevis, when
the grasshopper had guided him through a gateway into the meadow by the
brook.

"Indeed I am. It is true they declare that it is I who am wrong, and
never lose a chance of chattering at me, because they are always laying
up a store, and I wander about, laughing and singing. But then you see,
Bevis dear, they are quite demented, and so led away by their greedy,
selfish wishes that they do not even know that there is a sun. They say
they cannot see it, and do not believe there is any sunshine, nor do
they believe there are any stars. Now I do not sing at night, but I
always go where I can see a star. I slept under a mushroom last night,
and he told me he was pushing up as fast as he could before