time listening for
Mr. Nighthawk's _Peent! Peent!_ which now and then came faintly across
the meadow, and the dull, muffled _boom_ that often followed.

While Chirpy waited for the moon to grow full, one night an odd thing
happened. The stars twinkled overhead. There wasn't a cloud in the sky.
Yet all at once a loud _boom_ startled Chirpy Cricket and made him leap
suddenly towards home.

"Goodness!" he cried to Kiddie Katydid, who happened to be near him. "Did
you hear the thunder?"

"That wasn't thunder," Kiddie said. "And you'd better not jump like that
again. Mr. Nighthawk is here. He made that sound himself."

XX

BOUND TO BE DIFFERENT

Nothing ever surprised Chirpy Cricket more than what Kiddie Katydid told
him. He had thought it was thunder that he had just heard. But it was Mr.
Nighthawk, making that odd, booming sound of his. It was ever so much
louder than Chirpy had supposed it could be. He had never heard it so
near before.

For a moment Chirpy thought that perhaps Kiddie Katydid didn't know what
he was talking about. But no! There was Mr. Nighthawk's well-known call,
_Peent! Peent!_ There was no denying that it was his voice. He always
talked through his nose--or so it sounded. And one couldn't mistake it.

Chirpy Cricket began to think that after all he would rather not have a
talk with Mr. Nighthawk. He certainly sounded terrible!

Meanwhile Mr. Nighthawk alighted in a tree right over Chirpy's head, and
settled himself lengthwise along a limb. He was, indeed, an odd person.
He liked to be different from other folk. And just because other birds
sat crosswise on a perch, Mr. Nighthawk had to sit in exactly the
opposite fashion. No doubt if he could have, he would have hung
underneath the limb by his heels, like Benjamin Bat. Only he would have
wanted to hang by his nose instead of his heels, in order to be
different.

"Has anybody seen Chirpy Cricket?" Mr. Nighthawk sang out.

"He's on the ground, under that tree you're in," Kiddie Katydid informed
him. Kiddie never moved as he spoke, but clung closely to a twig in the
bush where he was hiding. Being green himself, he hardly thought that Mr.
Nighthawk would be able to discover him amongst shrubbery of the same
color.

Chirpy Cricket wished that Kiddie Katydid hadn't replied to Mr. Nighthawk
at all. But how could Kiddie know that Chirpy had changed his mind? And
now Mr. Nighthawk spoke to Chirpy.

"I can't see you very well, Mr. Crick