ine--is he a Long-horn or a Short-horn?" Kiddie Katydid
inquired.

At that question the stranger shifted uneasily from one foot to another.
And since he had six feet, he looked for a moment as if he were engaged
in a queer sort of dance.

"I should say--" he said at last--"I should say his horns were about
_medium_."

Kiddie Katydid stared at the fellow very hard.

"I believe you know more than you're willing to tell!" he suddenly
cried. And then he quickly shoved the letter inside the stranger's
mail-pouch. "That's not for me, after all!" he declared. "Unless I'm
greatly mistaken, the person that sent this letter is a Short-horn, the
same as you. And I want nothing to do with him!"

"Where's that other fellow that was clamoring for the message?" the
stranger asked. And spying Leaper the Locust on the edge of the crowd,
he sprang upon him, collared him, and explained that there had been a
mistake.

"The message is for you," he announced.

"But I don't want it now!" Leaper the Locust shouted. "I've heard it
twice already; and I don't like it in the least!"

XXI

LEAPER THE LOCUST IS WORRIED

Kiddie Katydid looked on happily while Leaper the Locust struggled to
free himself from the clutches of the messenger. But Leaper was no match
for the stranger. In the end he had to accept the message as his own.

"Now," said the stranger, "your cousin and his family will reach here by
to-morrow at the latest. So you'd better be making arrangements to
welcome him.

"Remember! Have plenty of food ready! I'll warn you now that if your
cousin's family have to go hungry they'll be pretty angry with you."

"I don't believe I need to worry," Leaper the Locust remarked
carelessly. "If they don't like what I have they can go without, for all
I care."

Though the stranger said nothing in reply to that, he glared at Leaper
in a threatening fashion which haunted him all the rest of the night.

"I wish I had never heard of this horrid message!" he exclaimed at last.
"I wish I had never laid claim to it. It's going to cause me trouble, I
know!"

The more he worried over the visit of his unknown cousin, the more
Leaper the Locust wished he were safely rid of the whole affair.

"I know what I'll do!" he cried at last. "I'll disguise myself. I'll
make my horns so long that people will think I'm somebody else."

So he set to work. And biting off some slender grasses, he bound them
to his stubby horns with threads from