."

"Good gracious! It's night," said Twinkle, with a start. "I ought to be
at home and in bed this very minute!"

"Never mind," said the grasshopper; "you can sleep any time, but this is
our annual ball, and it's a great privilege to witness it."

Suddenly the grass all around them became brilliantly lighted, as if
from a thousand tiny electric lamps. Twinkle looked closely, and saw
that a vast number of fireflies had formed a circle around them, and
were illuminating the scene of the ball.

In the center of the circle were assembled hundreds of grasshoppers, of
all sizes. The small ones were of a delicate green color, and the
middle-sized ones of a deeper green, while the biggest ones were a
yellowish brown.

But the members of the orchestra interested Twinkle more than anything
else. They were seated upon the broad top of a big toadstool at
one side, and the musicians were all beetles and big-bugs. A fat
water-beetle played a bass fiddle as big and fat as himself, and two
pretty ladybugs played the violins. A scarab, brightly colored with
scarlet and black, tooted upon a long horn, and a sand-beetle made the
sound of a drum with its wings. Then there was a coleopto, making
shrill sounds like a flute--only of course Twinkle didn't know the
names of these beetles, and thought they were all just "bugs."

When the orchestra began to play, the music was more pleasing than you
might suppose; anyway, the grasshoppers liked it, for they commenced at
once to dance.

The antics of the grasshoppers made Twinkle laugh more than once, for
the way they danced was to hop around in a circle, and jump over each
other, and then a lady grasshopper and a gentleman grasshopper would
take hold of hands and stand on their long rear legs and swing partners
until it made the girl dizzy just to watch them.

Sometimes two of them would leap at once, and knock against each other
in the air, and then go tumbling to the ground, where the other dancers
tripped over them. She saw Prince Nimble dancing away with the others,
and his partner was a lovely green grasshopper with sparkling black eyes
and wings that were like velvet. They didn't bump into as many of the
others as some did, and Twinkle thought they danced very gracefully
indeed.

And now, while the merriment was at its height, and waiter-grasshoppers
were passing around refreshments that looked like grass seeds covered
with thick molasses, a big cat suddenly jumped into the circ