It would be hard to say which was the prouder—the
person under the banner or the one on top of it.
Anyhow, Chirpy Cricket was prouder than both of them
together, because his torchlight procession promised
to be a great success.
“Are you ready?” he cried, looking back
at the marchers, who stretched behind him in a long
line beside the stone wall.
Everybody shouted “Aye, aye, sir!” So
Chirpy Cricket pranced away across the meadow, wearing
a broad smile. Probably he had never before looked
quite so cheerful.
But he had not gone far before something happened
that drove the smile from his face, replacing it with
a dark frown. He had glanced behind him, because
he wanted—quite naturally—to
look at that long line of lights twinkling through
the night. And to his distress he saw that Freddie
Firefly’s relations were flying helter-skelter
in all directions. They had bolted out of the
line and were dancing off across the meadow after
a fashion that no torchlight procession ought to follow.
“Stop! Stop!” Chirpy Cricket called.
Even as he spoke, as many as a dozen lights flashed
past him and went flittering on across the fields.
Really, the only ones besides Chirpy that had stayed
in the line as they should were Mehitable Moth, who
still carried her banner right behind him, and Freddie
Firefly, who sat on top of the banner.
And even Freddie Firefly was becoming restless.
When he saw his brothers and cousins go dancing off
in the dark he couldn’t help wanting to dance
too.
“You’d better hurry!” he said to
Chirpy Cricket. “Those fellows—”
he pointed to the dozen that had just passed them—“those
fellows have got ahead of you. And it looks to
me very much as if you were out of line.”
Chirpy Cricket stared at Freddie Firefly in astonishment.
“Do you think so?” he exclaimed.
“I don’t see how it happened.”
“Neither do I!” Freddie Firefly said.
“But if I’m to stay in the procession
I certainly can’t sit on this banner any longer.
And besides, if I’m going to call on Farmer
Green’s wife I shall have to travel faster than
we’re moving now.”
Since they were then standing stock-still in the meadow,
there was a good deal of truth in what Freddie Firefly
said.
“But you don’t need to call on Mrs. Green!”
Chirpy Cricket cried. “That’s not
your banner, you know. It belongs to Mehitable
Moth.”
“I’m afraid Mrs. Green has heard I’m
coming; and I don’t want to disappoint her,”
Freddie replied.
And then he sprang from his perch and went zigzagging
away.
One might think that Chirpy Cricket would have been
quite upset by the breaking up of his torchlight procession.
But being naturally cheerful, he merely smiled and
said that it was plain that the Fireflies were a very
flighty family.
BUSTER’S SCHEME
