Chester Cricket's New Home

 

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Contents

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Dedication

1.
Tragedy! With a Splash

2.
Freedom—Finally!

3.
Simon's Log

4.
John Robin and Friends

5.
Furry Folk

6.
Home Life—and Too Much, in Fact

7.
Donald Dragonfly

8.
The Lady Beatrice

9.
Tuffet Towers

10.
Home!

By George Selden

Copyright

 

For Sarah, Beth, Mary, and Ben—

From a somewhat inattentive, but genuinely loving uncle. G.S.

ONE

Tragedy! With a Splash

Chester Cricket was feeling jumpy. And it wasn't the good kind of “jumpiness” that he often felt—when he hopped across the brook, for example, all the way from his stump to the mossy bank on the other side. He sometimes would make that flying leap just for the pure young fun of it. But not now. This was more a worrying, fidgeting feeling. In fact, Chester Cricket had a foreboding. He decided it really must be a foreboding—although, to be honest, he had to admit that he didn't quite know just what a foreboding was. But Simon Turtle had said that he had one a month ago, and that same afternoon—a lovely bright day in July it was—a storm had come up and a tall ash tree got struck by lightning. A mockingbird lost his home. (But he built a new one in Bill Squirrel's squirrel's elm.)

“A foreboding,” said Chester gloomily, as he stared out the hole of the stump where he lived. “That's what I've got all right.”

It seemed a peculiar day to be gloomy. The rich light of a late August afternoon lay softly on the whole Old Meadow, now known as Tucker's Countryside. It had been renamed after Chester's friends Tucker Mouse and Harry Cat had saved it from destruction. And although all the folks who lived there referred to it now as Tucker's Countryside—or simply The Countryside—in their secret hearts all the animals round about, be they rabbit or turtle or cricket, still felt that it was the good, familiar Old Meadow. It was Chester's world—a world of grass, reeds, trees, of Tuffet Country and Pasture Land, with the brook running through it like a song running through your head when you're happy. And now it lay under a golden sun at the end of a flawless summer day that should have felt as full and ripe as a peach. But it didn't. It felt, well, nervous. The world felt nervous. At least to Chester Cricket it did.

“I just can't get enough of this place,” said a lady's voice, behind Chester's stump.

A second lady sighed with pleasure. “Oh, neither can I, May! It's like a little paradise. I'd die without it. Gosh, I'm tired.” The pleasure sighed off in a weary groan.

Chester recognized those ladies' voices. Ever since Tucker and Harry had rescued the Old Meadow by convincing the citizens of the town of Hedley that this was the site of the old Hedley homestead, the human beings had treated the place as if it were sacred. (Which suited the animals, birds, reptiles, insects, and fish who lived there very well indeed! They didn't get hunted, captured, exterminated, or even stepped on any more.) By order of the Town Council, many delightful winding paths had been laid out, so that people could meander beside the brook and beneath the trees, to enjoy the “unspoiled nature.” But they had to stay strictly on the paths—a lot of disagreeable signs said so—in order not to spoil the charming wilderness.

One of these paths ran behind Chester's stump. Most stumps do not have a front or back, of course, but Chester's did, because the opening to his hole overlooked a little patch of grass that sloped down to the brook. That obviously, both Nature and Chester decided, was meant to be a front yard—with a water view. What made it especially nice was that Chester could sit in his front door, observing the gurgling foam beneath him, where the brook raced over a stretch of stones, without having any human beings poke their noses down to spy on him. Chester Cricket, like many insects and animals—and a few wise human beings—enjoyed his privacy.

But sometimes he liked to jump up on his stump and do a little spying himself. Human beings, from Chester's point of view—the top of his stump, or a twig in a bush—were quite fascinating, a curious study, although somewhat clumsy compared to a cricket. It had been up there, on his roof, that Chester became acquainted with the two ladies who were talking now. (He became acquainted with
them,
but they never so much as
noticed
him.)

They were Lola and May—he hadn't heard their last names—and they'd come every sunny day that summer to walk in Hedley's Meadow, which was what the human beings had renamed the Old Meadow, which was also Tucker's Countryside. As a matter of fact, for a few square miles of greenery it had more names than any comparable plot of land in all of Connecticut.

Their “constitutional” was how May and Lola referred to their daily walk. Although they were not old—indeed, they only referred to each other as “middle-aged” behind each other's back—they were far enough along to know that they needed some exercise. Especially since—and this they never referred to at all, behind or in front of anyone's back—they were both quite “stout.” (Not even in their secret hearts would either of them use the dread word “fat.”)

“I love this part of the meadow especially,” said Lola, “but I wish they'd put more of those benches around here.”

“Well, this is the wild part,” said May. “They just let Nature go back to itself.”

“Hmm,” thought Chester inside his stump. He looked across the brook. “Wild Nature going back to itself” seemed to mean that at least here the human beings had left a few reckless weeds and a nervous sapling free to grow, without being trimmed back within an inch of their lives. Chester liked the fact that in this corner where the brook made its turn there weren't those dratted benches all over.

“My feet are just killing me!” Lola groaned.

Chester looked at all his feet and laughed. He had quite a few—to be precise, six—and he couldn't remember a single one of them ever being sore.

“There
is
that old stump—”

Chester Cricket stopped laughing.

“—You might be able to rest on that, dear.”

“Aren't
you
tired, May?”

“As a matter of fact—”

“Come on, dear. It's broad enough for us both.”

Chester wanted to warn—chirp—shout!—that his stump was absolutely
not
broad enough for two overweight ladies. He would have jumped up there himself, in hopes that the two ladies were afraid of insects, but if he did that, he realized, a terrible fate was sure to befall him—besit on him, in fact.

“I hope it won't smear us. It looks sort of wet.”

“We've had so much rain this summer.”

“Here goes—”

“No!”
The cricket gave his loudest chirp.

Too late.

For the stump
was
soggy. And it was old. And worm-eaten too. (The worms didn't bother Chester at all. They kept to themselves. Worms
like
living in the woodwork, alone.) Indeed, Chester's very last thought, as the feeble, weakened walls of his home came crashing in around him, was actually for the worms. He hoped a few of them might survive—since he was certain that he would not—and he tried very hard to think of the worms, in order not to feel his fear. With a heavy
sqwunch
the stump collapsed. A big splinter of wood fell across Chester's back—he lay in the darkness, still as death.

“Good Lord!” came May's voice.

“Mercy!” said Lola.

There followed two very copious splashes: the ladies had slipped from the sagging stump and fallen in the brook. And the squeaks, the squawks, and the spluttering that then arose would have made a whole flock of geese landing in a lake sound shy by comparison.

In the choppy and chaotic black it occurred to Chester that he could hear the women floundering in the water—a very good sign. He stretched a leg—he could feel as well, although he was pinned beneath the wood. With a surge and a silent chirp of joy he realized that he wasn't dead. Just trapped, he was, but badly trapped: he could only move three legs a little and couldn't shift his position at all.

Outside, the feminine commotion was moving up the bank as the ladies rolled and crawled from the brook. There were many “Land sakes!” and many “My stars!” and several “Oh, dears!” and one or two swearwords—polite ones, though—before Lola and May had righted themselves. The last thing Chester heard, as they squished away down the path to the road, was one asking the other if she thought the driver would let them on the bus— “in all these sopping clothes!” (He did. And to tell the truth, it was only a week or so before the whole accident became an adventure, and fun, for the ladies. Their “stump story” they called it, and told it and boasted and laughed about it for the rest of their lives.)

It was no fun for Chester, however. After testing his six legs, he tried to move his antennae. There was no space to wave them around, of course, but he could feel them both, unbroken, which seemed like kind of a miracle, they were so very long and delicate. One wing ached badly—it was caught in an awkward position—and the other was tucked and trapped beneath him. But that splinter of wood that held him fast had saved his life. It was propped at an angle that kept him from being completely crushed.