re's everything to eat in the
ground--everything anybody could possibly want. Wherever I tunnel I find
tender roots. You know Farmer Green grows fine vegetables here. Indeed
that's one reason I live under his garden."

"If that's one reason, what's another?" Chirpy Cricket asked him. For
Chirpy couldn't help being curious about this new-found cousin of his,
who had such strange ways and who was even stranger to look upon.

He was obliging enough--was Mr. Mole Cricket. He was quite willing to
answer any and all questions. It may be that he was glad of the chance to
talk with somebody. Certainly it seemed to Chirpy Cricket that his cousin
led a very lonely life. He explained to Chirpy that it was easy to dig in
the garden, because its soil was loose. The ploughing in the spring, and
the harrowing, as well as the hoeing that Farmer Green's hired man did
during the summer, kept the earth in fine condition for tunnelling. Of
course, living beneath the surface as he did, Mr. Mole Cricket had no way
of knowing why the garden soil was so nicely stirred up. He only knew
that it was so. And that was quite enough for him.

Chirpy Cricket said that it was all very interesting to hear about. But
he knew that he shouldn't care to follow Mr. Mole Cricket's manner of
living. "I love to fiddle," he said. "I simply must go abroad every
pleasant night and make music."

"But you don't need to leave the dirt to fiddle!" Mr. Mole Cricket
exclaimed. "I'm musical too. I often fiddle down in my house. I don't
know a better way of passing the time, when a person's not digging or
eating."

"Won't you play for me now?" Chirpy Cricket asked him.

Mr. Mole Cricket was more than willing to oblige. He began to fiddle at
once. And the tune he played was as strange as he was. Chirpy Cricket did
not like it at all. It seemed to him very mournful, a sort of sad, sad
air, as if Mr. Mole Cricket were bewailing his dismal life beneath the
garden.

But of course Chirpy was too polite to tell that to his cousin. And when
Mr. Mole Cricket asked him how he liked the tune, Chirpy replied that it
was very, very interesting.

XIII

A QUESTION OF FEET

"Are you sure you're a cousin of mine?" Chirpy Cricket inquired of Mr.
Mole Cricket. "Don't you think that perhaps you are mistaken? I'm almost
certain you are."

"No!" said Mr. Mole Cricket. "I can't be wrong. Why do you ask me such a
question?"

"Your forefeet"--Chirpy told him--"your forefee