l Chirpy's relations were of the same mind as he. They acted as if they
would rather make the nights ring with their music than do anything else.
And Johnnie Green said one evening, when he heard Solomon Owl hooting
over in the hemlock woods, that it was lucky there weren't as many Owls
as there were Crickets in the valley.

If there were hundreds--or maybe thousands--of Owls, and they all hooted
at the same time, there'd be no sleeping for anybody. At least that was
Johnnie Green's opinion. And it does seem a reasonable one.

Chirpy Cricket's nearest relations all looked exactly like him. Everybody
said that the Crickets bore a strong family resemblance to one another.
But there were others--more distant cousins--that were quite unlike
Chirpy. There were the Mole Crickets, who stayed in the ground and never,
never came to the surface; and there were the Tree Crickets, who lived in
the trees and fiddled _re-teat! re-teat re-teat!_ until you might have
thought they would get tired of their ditty.

But they never did. They seemed to like their music as much as Chirpy
Cricket liked his _cr-r-r-i! cr-r-r-i! cr-r-r-i!_

III

THE BUMBLEBEE FAMILY

The farmyard was not the first place that Chirpy Cricket chose for his
home. Before he dug himself a hole under the straw near the barn he had
settled in the pasture. Although the cows seemed to think that the grass
in the pasture belonged to them alone, Chirpy decided that there ought to
be enough for him too, if he didn't eat too much.

He had been living in the pasture some time before he discovered that a
very musical family had come to live next door to him. They were known as
the Bumblebees; and there were dozens of them huddled into a hole long
since deserted by some Woodchucks that had moved to other quarters.

Although they were said to be great workers--most of them!--the Bumblebee
family found plenty of time to make music. They were very fond of
humming. And in the beginning Chirpy Cricket thought their humming a
pleasant sound to hear, as he sat in his dark hole during the daytime.

"They're having a party in there!" he said, the first time he noticed the
droning music. "No doubt"--he added--"no doubt they're enjoying a
dance!"

The thought made him feel so jolly that if it had only been dark out of
doors he would have left his home and leaped about in the pasture.

All that day, between naps, Chirpy could hear the humming. "It's
certainly a long part