CHAPTER XI THE HORSE IN THE KITCHEN.

“NOW, I’ll tell Mis. Vernon, if you do dem tricks. Stop.”

“Why, he’s perfectly harmless, Minerva. Look, I’m holding him.”

“Don’ you let him get at me. Mah goodness, he has a head like a horse. Ooh, Lawdy, where’s he gone?”

It was raining and Ethel and I were in the sitting room when we heard these loud words and then Minerva burst into the room.

She had her skirts held at a height that would have been all right for ballet dancing, but Minerva is not a ballet dancer and Ethel bade her remember herself.

Now it seemed to me that that was exactly what she was doing. Fright is memory of self as nearly as I can make out, and Minerva was evidently frightened at a new animal that “looked like a horse.”

I had a mental picture of a pony that James had smuggled into the kitchen and then I remembered that New York was not a stranger to ponies and that perhaps in her childhood Minerva might have ridden a pony in Central Park or at Coney Island. No, it must be some other beast.

“What is the matter. Don’t you see that Mr. Vernon is reading to me?”

“But it jumped at me!”

“What jumped at you?” said I sternly. If there is anything that I dislike it is to be interrupted when I am reading. If interruptions ever came in the midst of prosy descriptions I would not mind it at all. I could even stand it in the midst of a digression (like the present one), but interrupters have the uncanny knack of timing their breaks so that just as the author has led up to a brilliant mot and the moment is psychologically perfect, they say their little say and when the reading is resumed the humour or the wit of the sentence has evaporated.

James now appeared in the doorway.

“What jumped at Minerva, James?”

“It was on’y a grasshopper, sir. Never saw anyone afraid of a grasshopper before.”

“Why, Minerva!” said Ethel. “You said it looked like a horse.”

James, with a chuckle, stooped and picked something from the floor. It bent its legs for a spring as he put his hand down and again Minerva screamed. It leaped with a thud against his palm and he held it between thumb and forefinger and said,

“She’s right. It does look like a horse.”

I had never noticed the resemblance before, but there was no gainsaying it, once our attention had been called to it. I imagine that if the head were increased to horse size and the body and legs were in proportion, it would be a more formidable looking beast than the hyena. And if a hyena were reduced to grasshopper size he would be as “cute” as a caterpillar.

“Minerva,” said Ethel, “sit down. You may go, James. I wish you would not scare Minerva.”

“Never thought she’d scare so easy, Mrs. Vernon,” said he respectfully. He was always respectful. He went out into the woodshed to split some kindlings. He had already split enough to last us all of a winter, but it was healthful exercise and I kept him at it when he was not singing or mowing the lawn.

“Minerva, I don’t suppose that there is a more harmless insect in the world than a grasshopper,” said Ethel.

“What are they for?” said Minerva.

“Why—er,” said Ethel, while I held my book up before my face discreetly.

“Why, they are to hop in the grass.”

“Oh,” said Minerva.

“Yes, they can hop many times the length of their own bodies.”

“Oh,” said Minerva.

Ethel made a mental calculation.

“I should say, Minerva,” said she, “that a grasshopper can hop about one hundred and twenty times his own length. How tall are you?”

“I’m five feet three,” was her unexpected answer.

“Well, call it five feet,” said Ethel, with a very serious face. “If you had the power of a grasshopper you could hop six hundred feet. That is to say, you could hop a long city block.”

The idea of Minerva hopping from Seventh Avenue to Eighth (for instance) was too much for me and I began to cough so hard that I had to go up stairs for a trochee.

When I came down Ethel was saying,

“You’ve heard the noises in the grass, haven’t you?”

“’Deed I have,” said Minerva, dismally.

“Did you know that the grasshoppers make a great deal of that noise?”

“No’m,” said Minerva, her mouth wide open.

“They do. And how do you suppose they do it?”

“They blow, I suppose.”

“No, they don’t blow. Do they, Philip?”

“No, very few grasshoppers can blow. They can blow away, but they make that noise by—er—why, they make that noise—”

The words of a college song came into my head, “I can play the fiddle with my left hind leg.”

“They make fiddles of themselves and play, Minerva.”

Minerva looked at me seriously.

“That’s it, Minerva,” said Ethel eagerly. “They scrape their wings in some way and that makes the sound. You don’t know how many things there are to learn about the country and, Minerva, it isn’t half as dangerous as the city. To-morrow if it is pleasant, we’ll go out and try to catch a grasshopper playing his little fiddle. You may go, now, Minerva.”

Minerva went out and closed the kitchen door and the next minute the house shook. I thought of the powder mills at Mildon. Again the house shook.

“It is Minerva hopping,” said Ethel.

“Pretty close to six hundred feet, from the sound,” said I.