hard,
because it is meant to cover the gauzy wings underneath. Puff!"

Away flew the locust.

"You see, he doesn't use his first pair, but holds them out straight
from his body while he spreads out the gauzy ones like a--like a--"

"Fan!" shouted Betty, quite forgetting the tiny squirrel who had come up
near her, and, at her shout, nearly jumped out of his little red
jacket.

"A yellow fan," said the old man. "And some have a red fan. Well, I
think," said he, reaching for his pail, "there isn't going to be any
more of this story."

"Not any more? But there must be more, sir; I've seen hundreds and
hundreds of them on a dusty road, and, please, they're just the color of
the dirt."

The guide shook his head. "Not to-day."

By this time Betty was so eager to have him go on that she had forgotten
all about being afraid of him. "And when they whir up from the road,
sir, they say, 'Clack! clack! clack!'"

The old man made a sound like the noise of a locust.

"How does it make its mouth move, sir?"

"It doesn't make its mouth move, child. It makes the noise by striking
the edges of the gauzy wings and hard wing covers together. See, this
way!" And the old man struck his arm and leg together. "It has another
fiddle, too, which it uses when it makes the long, rasping, drowsy sound
of summer days. Then it rubs the rough edges of its hind leg against the
edge of its wing-cover."

"Please, is it happy, then?" asked Betty.

"Just as happy as a healthy locust, who lives in long, sweet-smelling
grass and is contented with his own singing, can be, and that is very
happy."

"Oh!" said Betty, "it doesn't use its mouth, then? Jimmie said it did."

"Jimmie's a stupid boy. See this fellow." The old man held the locust
toward Betty. "With its upper lip, broad, you see; and there is the
lower lip made in two scallops, and there's a short feeler on either
side, and another pair of soft jaws with a feeler. Hidden away under
those parts is a pair of dark-brown, horny jaws which open like two big
swinging gates."

"What makes them so big?"

"The better to eat you with, my dear." The guide worked his jaws until
Betty, half afraid and half pleased, screamed and ran behind a tree.
"Oh, how they can eat!" growled the old man, "more than any little girl
or boy I ever knew! Years and years ago, when your mamma was a baby,
they mounted up into the air from the Rocky Mountains and flew eastward
in a great cloud. Down they swooped up