“Here are the banners!” Chirpy Cricket
said to Freddie. “Which one do you like
best?”
Freddie looked at the banners and read them slowly,
for he was not a good reader.
The first that he examined was the one Moses Mosquito
had brought. And this is what it said:
Why Fuss about A bite, if
it makes somebody else happy?
“I don’t care for that one at all,”
Freddie Firefly announced. And he turned then
to Kiddie Katydid’s banner, which he spelled
out with a good deal of trouble, because it was not
so well printed.
This banner made the following announcement:
Honest to Goodness, I didn’t
do it!
“Why, I don’t know what that’s all
about!” Freddie exclaimed impatiently.
“Let me see the third one!” So he looked
next at the banner of Mehitable Moth, which seemed
to please him better, as he read it aloud:
Don’t worry, Mrs. Green!
I’ll call at the farmhouse
before fall.
“That’s better!” cried Freddie Firefly.
“I’ll carry this banner with a great deal
of pleasure. And I can call at the farmhouse to-night—if
Farmer Green’s family doesn’t go to bed
too early.”
But there was one difficulty about Freddie’s
plan. Mehitable Moth did not like to have her
banner, which she had made with great pains, taken
away from her like that. And she drew Chirpy Cricket
to one side and began talking to him in an undertone.
Soon he turned again to Freddie Firefly, saying, “She
thinks that if you’re going to carry her banner
in the procession you ought to let her take your light.”
“Oh, I can’t do that!” Freddie exclaimed
quickly. “I wouldn’t think of
doing that!”
“It would be only fair, it seems to me,”
Chirpy Cricket observed.
“Well, I won’t do it, anyhow,” Freddie
declared. “I’d stay out of the procession
first. And so would all my relations, too.”
Chirpy Cricket began to look worried. And it
was no wonder. For he knew he could have no torchlight
procession without the Firefly family. But pretty
soon he cheered up noticeably.
“I know what you can do!” he announced.
“You can ride on top of Mehitable Moth’s
banner and keep flashing your light on it!”
THE TORCHLIGHT PARADE
At last the torchlight procession was about to begin
its march. Chirpy Cricket took his place at its
head, as leader. And close behind him came Mehitable
Moth, gaily bearing her banner aloft, with Freddie
Firefly perched on top of it, and flashing his greenish-white
light so that its rays fell full upon the words, which
told Farmer Green’s wife not to worry, because
Mehitable Moth agreed to pay her a call before cold
weather set in.
