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 party!” he exclaimed, when he awoke late in the afternoon and heard the Bumblebee family still making music. But about sunset their humming stopped. And Chirpy Cricket couldn’t help feeling a bit disappointed, because he had hoped to enjoy a dance himself, to the Bumblebees’ music when he left his home that evening.

A little later he told his favorite cousin about the party that had lasted all day. And Chirpy said that he supposed the Bumblebees had only one party a year, because he understood that most of them were great workers, and he didn’t believe they would care to spend a whole day humming, very often.

The favorite cousin gave Chirpy a strange look in the moonlight. And then he began to fiddle, making no remark whatsoever. He thought there was no use wasting words on a fine, warm night—just the sort of night for a lively cr-r-r-i! cr-r-r-i! cr-r-r-i!

Chirpy Cricket lost no time in getting his own fiddle to working. And each of them really believed he was himself making most of the music that was heard in the pasture.

Once in a while Chirpy Cricket and his cousin stopped to eat a little grass, or paused to carry a few spears into their holes, because they liked to have something to nibble on in the daytime. But they always returned to their fiddling again; and they never stopped for good until almost morning.

But at last Chirpy Cricket announced that he would make no more music that night.

“I’ll go home now,” he said. “I expect to have a good day’s rest. And I’ll meet you at this same spot to-morrow night for a little fiddling.”

“I’ll be here,” his favorite cousin promised.