Hilda laughed at the squirrel’s alarm, and then turned her attention to a large green grasshopper who seemed to demand it.  He had alighted on her knee, and now proceeded to exhibit his different points before her admiring gaze with singular gravity and deliberation.  First he slowly opened his wings, to show the delicate silvery gauze of the under-wings; then as slowly closed them, demonstrating the perfect fit of his whole wing-costume and the harmony of its colors.  He next extended one leg, calling her attention to its remarkable length and muscular proportions.  Then, lest she should think he had but one, he extended the other; and then gave a vigorous hop with both of them, to show her that he did not really need wings, but could get on perfectly well without them.  Finally he rubbed himself all over with his long antennae, and then, pointing them full at her, and gazing at her with calm and dispassionate eyes, he said plainly enough:  “And now, Monster, what have you to show me?”

Hildegarde was wondering how she could best dispel the scorn with which this majestic insect evidently regarded her, when suddenly something new appeared on her gown,—­something black, many-legged, hairy, most hideous; something which ran swiftly but stealthily, with a motion which sent a thrill of horror through her veins.  She started up with a little shriek, shaking off the unlucky spider as if it had been the Black Death in concrete.  Then she looked round with flaming cheeks, to see if her scream had been heard by the hay-makers.  No, they were far away, and too busy to take heed of her.  But the charm was broken.  Queen Hildegarde had plenty of courage of a certain sort, but she could not face a spider.  The golden throne had become a “siege perilous,” and she abdicated in favor of the grasshopper and his black and horrent visitor.

What should she do now?  The charm of the morning had made her idle and drowsy, and she did not feel like going home to help Nurse Lucy in making the butter, though she often did so with right good-will.  She looked dreamily around, her eyes wandering here and there over the great meadow and the neat stone walls which bounded it.  Presently she spied the chimneys and part of the red roof of a little cottage which peeped from a thick clump of trees just beyond the wall.  Who lived in that cottage, Hilda wondered.  Why should she not go and see?  She was very thirsty, and there she might get a glass of water.  Oh! perhaps it was Bubble’s cottage, where he and his mother and his sister Pink lived.  Now she thought of it, Bubble had told her that he lived “over beyont the ten-acre lot;” of course this must be the place.  Slowly she walked across the meadow and climbed the wall, wondering a good deal about the people whom she was going to see.  She had often meant to ask Bubble more about his sister with the queer name; but the lesson-hour was so short, and there were always so many questions for Bubble to ask