d by a great big
sawmill, or a lake set like a sapphire in the deep green of the forests.
And the hills were rolling nearer and nearer in great shadows. The
children ate their luncheon contentedly, looking out of the windows and
thinking of the mountains there would be to climb, the ponds, the
streams to fish, the pictures to take, and the stories they were to hear
the summer long.

"Mother," said Betty, eating her second piece of chocolate
cake--"mother, what will Ben Gile tell us this summer?"

"Let me see," said her mother, "perhaps it will be about the little
creatures--grasshoppers and katydids, butterflies and bees."

"Goody!"

"Pooh!" said Jimmie, "I don't see what you want to know of those old
things. I'd much rather hear about porcupines. There isn't anything to
say about a grasshopper except that it hops."

"Isn't there, my son? Well, that shows that you don't use your eyes.
Suppose some one said there was nothing to say about you except that you
whistle?"

"Well, what is there about an old grasshopper, anyhow?"

"I don't know, but Ben will."

"But tell us something, mum," urged Jimmie, who loved his mother dearly,
and was certain she knew more than anybody else, in part because she had
been to college, but chiefly because she was his mother.

"Let me see," said Mrs. Reece, "I shall have to think about it." Both
of the children came as close to her as they could, while she continued:

"What a strange world it would be if there were no insects in it! We
should have no little crickets chirping in the sunny fields or in the
dark corners and cracks of our houses. There would be no katydids
singing all night, no clacking of the locusts in the tall grass along
dusty roads, no drowsy hum of bees. There would be no little ants and
big ants digging out underground tunnels and carrying the grains of sand
as far from their doorways as possible. There would be no brightly
colored moths and butterflies flitting from flower to flower. We should
find no sparkling fairy webs spun anew for us every morning."

"But, mother, all these creatures aren't insects," said Jimmie.

"Yes, they are, dear. It is hard to believe that they all belong to the
same family called insecta, but they do."

"Mother, what's that word mean?"

"It doesn't mean anything more than cut up into parts. You see, Betty,
all these insect bodies are made up of separate rings joined nicely
together. If you look carefully you will find that behi