ANY one would have called Bobby Bell a comfortable boy—that is, any one who did not mind bugs; and I am sure I do not see why any one should mind bugs, except the kind that taste badly in raspberries and some other kinds. It was among the things that are entertaining to see Bobby Bell bobbing around among the buttercups looking for grasshoppers. Grasshoppers are interesting when you consider that they have heads like door knobs or green cheeses and legs with crooks to them. “Bobbing” means to go like Bobby Bell—that is, to go up and down, to talk to one's self, and not to hear any one shout, unless it is some one whom not to hear is to get into difficulties.

Across the Salem Road from Mr. Atherton Bell's house there were many level meadows of a pleasant greenness, as far as Cum-ming's alder swamp; and these meadows were called the Bow Meadows. If you take the alder swamp and the Bow Meadows together, they were like this: the swamp was mysterious and unvisited, except by those who went to fish in the Muck Hole for turtles and eels. Frogs with solemn voices lived in the swamp. Herons flew over it slowly, and herons also are uncanny affairs. We believed that the people of the swamp knew things it was not good to know, like witchcraft and the insides of the earth. In the meadows, on the other hand, there were any number of cheerful and busy creatures, some along the level of the buttercups, but most of them about the roots of the grasses. The people in the swamp were wet, cold, sluggish, and not a great many of them. The people of the meadows were dry, warm, continually doing something, and in number not to be calculated by any rule in Wentworth's Arithmetic.

So you see how different were the two, and how it comes about that the meadows were nearly the best places in the world to be in, both because of the society there, and because of the swamp near at hand and interesting to think about. So, too, you see why it was that Bobby Bell could be found almost any summer day “bobbing” for grasshoppers in the Bow Meadows—“bobbing” meaning to go up and down like Bobby Bell, to talk to one's self and not to hear any one shout; and “grasshoppers” being interesting because of their heads resembling door knobs or green cheeses, because of the crooks in their legs, and because of their extraordinary habit of jumping.

There were in Hagar at this time four ladies who lived at a little distance from the Salem Road and Mr. Atherton Bell's house, on a road which goes over a hill and off to a district called Scrabble Up and Down, where huckleberries and sweet fern mostly grow. They were known as the Tuttle Four Women, being old Mrs. Tuttle and the three Miss Tuttles, of whom Miss Rachel was the eldest.

It is easy to understand why Miss Rachel and the children of the village of Hagar did not get along well together, when you consider how clean she was, how she walked so as never to fall over anything, nor took any interest in squat tag, nor resembled the children of the village of Hagar in any respect. And so you can understand how it was that, when she came down the hill that Saturday afternoon and saw Bobby Bell through the bars in the Bow Meadows, she did not understand his actions, and disapproved of them, whatever they were.

The facts were these: In the first place a green grasshopper, who was reckless or had not been brought up rightly, had gone down Bobby's back next the skin, where he had no business to be; and naturally Bobby stood on his head to induce him to come out. That seems plain enough, for, if you are a grasshopper and down a boy's back, and the boy stands on his head, you almost always come out to see what he is about; because it makes you curious, if not ill, to be down a boy's back and have him stand on his head. Any one can see that. And this is the reason I had to explain about Miss Rachel, in order to show you why she did not understand it, nor understand what followed after.

In the next place, Bobby knew that when you go where you have no business to, you are sometimes spanked, but usually you are talked to unpleasantly, and tied up to something by the leg, and said to be in disgrace. Usually you are tied to the sewing machine, and “disgrace” means the corner of the sewing-room between the machine and the sofa. It never occurred to him but that this was the right and natural order of things. Very likely it is. It seemed so to Bobby.

Now it is difficult to spank a grasshopper properly. And so there was nothing to do but to tie him up and talk to him unpleasantly. That seems quite simple and plain. But the trouble was that it was a long time since Miss Rachel had stood on her head, or been spanked, or tied up to anything. This was unfortunate, of course. And when she saw Bobby stand violently on his head and then tie a string to a grasshopper, she thought it was extraordinary business, and probably bad, and she came up to the bars in haste.

“Bobby!” she said, “you naughty boy, are you pulling off that grasshopper's leg?”

Bobby thought this absurd. “Gasshoppers,” he said calmly, “ithn't any good 'ith their legth off.”

This was plain enough, too, because grasshoppers are intended to jump, and cannot jump without their legs; consequently it would be quite absurd to pull them off. Miss Rachel thought one could not know this without trying it, and especially know it in such a calm, matter-of-fact way as Bobby seemed to do, without trying it a vast number of times; therefore she became very much excited. “You wicked, wicked boy!” she cried. “I shall tell your father!” Then she went off.

Bobby wondered awhile what his father would say when Miss Rachel told him that grasshoppers were no good with their legs off. When Bobby told him that kind of thing, he generally chuckled to himself and called Bobby “a queer little chicken.” If his father called Miss Rachel “a queer little chicken,” Bobby felt that it would seem strange. But he had to look after the discipline of the grasshopper, and it is no use trying to think of two things at once. He tied the grasshopper to a mullein stalk and talked to him unpleasantly, and the grasshopper behaved very badly all the time; so that Bobby was disgusted and went away to leave him for a time—went down to the western end of the meadows, which is a drowsy place. And there it came about that he fell asleep, because his legs were tired, because the bees hummed continually, and because the sun was warm and the grass deep around him.

Miss Rachel went into the village and saw Mr. Atherton Bell on the steps of the post-office. He was much astonished at being attacked in such a disorderly manner by such an orderly person as Miss Rachel; but he admitted, when it was put to him, that pulling off the legs of grasshoppers was interfering with the rights of grasshoppers. Then Miss Rachel went on her way, thinking that a good seed had been sown and the morality of the community distinctly advanced.

The parents of other boys stood on the post-office steps in great number, for it was near mail-time; and here you might have seen what varieties of human nature there are. For some were taken with the conviction that the attraction of the Bow Meadows to their children was all connected with the legs of grasshoppers; some suspected it only, and were uneasy; some refused to imagine such a thing, and were indignant. But they nearly all started for the Bow Meadows with a vague idea of doing something, Mr. Atherton Bell and Father Durfey leading. It was not a well-planned expedition, nor did any one know what was intended to be done. They halted at the bars, but no Bobby Bell was in sight, nor did the Bow Meadows seem to have anything to say about the matter. The grasshoppers in sight had all the legs that rightly belonged to them. Mr. Atherton Bell got up on the wall and shouted for Bobby. Father Durfey climbed over the bars.

It happened that there was no one in the Bow Meadows at this time, except Bobby, Moses Durfey, Chub Leroy, and one other. Bobby was asleep, on account of the bumblebees humming in the sunlight; and the other three were far up the farther side, on account of an expedition through the alder swamp, supposing it to be Africa. There was a desperate battle somewhere; but the expedition turned out badly in the end, and in this place is neither here nor there. They heard Mr. Atherton Bell shouting, but they did not care about it. It is more to the point that Father Durfey, walking around in the grass, did not see the grasshopper who was tied to the mullein stalk and as mad as he could be. For when tied up in disgrace, one is always exceedingly mad at this point; but repentance comes afterwards. The grasshopper never got that far, for Father Durfey stepped on him with a boot as big as—big enough for Father Durfey to be comfortable in—so that the grasshopper was quite dead. It was to him as if a precipice were to fall on you, when you were thinking of something else. Then they all went away.

Bobby Bell woke up with a start, and was filled with remorse, remembering his grasshopper. The sun had slipped behind the shoulder of Windless Mountain. There was a faint light across the Bow Meadows, that made them sweet to look on, but a little ghostly. Also it was dark in the roots of the grasses, and difficult to find a green grasshopper who was dead; at least it would have been if he had not been tied to a mullein stalk. Bobby found him at last sunk deep in the turf, with his poor legs limp and crookless, and his head, which had been like a green cheese or a door knob, no longer looking even like the head of a grasshopper.

Then Bobby Bell sat down and wept. Miss Rachel, who had turned the corner and was half way up to the house of the Tuttle Four Women, heard him, and turned back to the bars. She wondered if Mr. Atherton Bell had not been too harsh. The Bow Meadows looked dim and mournful in the twilight. Miss Rachel was feeling a trifle sad about herself, too, as she sometimes did; and the round-cheeked cherub weeping in the wide shadowy meadows seemed to her something like her own life in the great world—not very well understood.

“He wath geen!” wailed Bobby, looking up at her, but not allowing his grief to be interrupted. “He wath my geen bug!”

Miss Rachel melted still further, without knowing why.

“What was green?”

She pulled down a bar and crawled through. She hoped Mr. Atherton Bell was not looking from a window, for it was difficult to avoid making one's self amusing to Mr. Atherton Bell. But Bobby was certainly in some kind of trouble.

“He'th dead!” wailed Bobby again. “He'th thtepped on!”

Miss Rachel bent over him stiffly. It was hard for one so austerely ladylike as Miss Rachel to seem gracious and compassionate, but she did pretty well.

“Oh, it's a grasshopper!” Then more severely: “Why did you tie him up?”

Bobby's sobs subsided into hiccoughs.

“It'th a disgace. I put him in disgace, and I forgotted him. He went down my back.”

“Did you step on him?”

“N-O-O-O!” The hiccoughs rose into sobs again. “He wath the geenest gasshopper!”

This was not strictly true; there were others just as green; but it was a generous tribute to the dead and a credit to Bobby Bell that he felt that way.

Now there was much in all this that Miss Rachel did not understand; but she understood enough to feel sharp twinges for the wrong that she had done Bobby Bell, and whatever else may be said of Miss Rachel, up to her light she was square. In fact, I should say that she had an acute-angled conscience. It was more than square; it was one of those consciences that you are always spearing yourself on. She felt very humble, and went with Bobby Bell to dig a grave for the green grasshopper under the lee of the wall. She dug it herself with her parasol, thinking how she must go up with Bobby Bell, what she must say to Mr. Atherton Bell, and how painful it would be, because Mr. Atherton Bell was so easily amused.

Bobby patted the grave with his chubby palm and cooed contentedly. Then they went up the hill in the twilight hand in hand.