Page:Morning-Glories and Other Stories.djvu/44

Rh this year. Next, under the brakes, lives Spin, the spider, as quiet and busy an insect as ever wove a web. Then among the buttercups there at your side Chirp the cricket, keeps house with his noisy wife and daughters, who sing half the night, when they should be asleep. Down by the rock, where the columbines grow, Lightheart, the lark, has her nest. We are a gay eighborhood, that you may believe; for when our work is done, we dance and sing in the twilight, or ramble over the field in search of adventures."

"And what am I to do here, where all are so busy?" asked lazy Moss, fearing some task was in store for her.

"You must help each one in their work, for you will find no pleasure with us unless you daily do some healthful task to keep you happy and show you the beauty of industry. Fie! do not pout and toss your head in that disrespectful manner, else I shall send you away to stay with neighbor Toad, who has grown so stout through indolence that she can only sit blinking all day in the sun; and that would not be so pleasant, I fancy, for she lives in a hole, and might gobble you up if no worm or fly was at hand. Think well of what I tell you, and please your worthy parents by doing what they desire. Now come away to bed; we must be up with the sun, for on Saturday all good housewives have much to do."

Thinking her hostess a very prosy mouse, and resolving to enjoy herself in her own way, Moss followed Nibble into a tidy little chamber hollowed out among the gnarled roots of the oak, carpeted with moss, hung with deep-red leaves, and furnished with a sumptuous thistle-down bed, in which the elf soon fell asleep to the lullaby a mosquito sang outside the cobweb curtains gathered round her.