James and the Giant Peach Read online

  And what a wonderful instrument the Old-Green-Grasshopper was playing upon. It was like a violin! It was almost exactly as though he were playing upon a violin!

  The bow of the violin, the part that moved, was his back leg. The strings of the violin, the part that made the sound, was the edge of his wing.

  He was using only the top of his back leg (the thigh), and he was stroking this up and down against the edge of his wing with incredible skill, sometimes slowly, sometimes fast, but always with the same easy flowing action. It was precisely the way a clever violinist would have used his bow; and the music came pouring out and filled the whole blue sky around them with magic melodies.

  When the first part was finished, everyone clapped madly, and Miss Spider stood up and shouted, 'Bravo! Encore! Give us some more!'

  'Did you like that, James?' the Old-Green-Grasshopper asked, smiling at the small boy.

  'Oh, I loved it!' James answered. 'It was beautiful! It was as though you had a real violin in your hands!'

  'A real violin!' the Old-Green-Grasshopper cried. 'Good heavens, I like that! My dear boy, I am a real violin! It is a part of my own body!'

  'But do all grasshoppers play their music on violins, the same way as you do?' James asked him.

  'No,' he answered, 'not all. If you want to know, I happen to be a "short-horned" grasshopper. I have two short feelers coming out of my head. Can you see them? There they are. They are quite short, aren't they? That's why they call me a "short-horn". And we "short-horns" are the only ones who play our music in the violin style, using a bow. My "long-horned" relatives, the ones who have long curvy feelers coming out of their heads, make their music simply by rubbing the edges of their two top wings together. They are not violinists, they are wing-rubbers. And a rather inferior noise these wing-rubbers produce, too, if I may say so. It sounds more like a banjo than a fiddle.'

  'How fascinating this all is!' cried James. 'And to think that up until now I had never even wondered how a grasshopper made his sounds.'

  'My dear young fellow,' the Old-Green-Grasshopper said gently, 'there are a whole lot of things in this world of ours that you haven't started wondering about yet. Where, for example, do you think that I keep my ears?'

  'Your ears? Why, in your head, of course.'

  Everyone burst out laughing.

  'You mean you don't even know that?' cried the Centipede.

  'Try again,' said the Old-Green-Grasshopper, smiling at James.

  'You can't possibly keep them anywhere else?'

  'Oh, can't I?'

  'Well - I give up. Where do you keep them?'

  'Right here,' the Old-Green-Grasshopper said. 'One on each side of my tummy.'

  'It's not true!'

  'Of course it's true. What's so peculiar about that? You ought to see where my cousins the crickets and the katydids keep theirs.'

  'Where do they keep them?'

  'In their legs. One in each front leg, just below the knee.'

  'You mean you didn't know that either?' the Centipede said scornfully.

  'You're joking,' James said. 'Nobody could possibly have his ears in his legs.'

  'Why not?'

  'Because... because it's ridiculous, that's why.'

  'You know what I think is ridiculous?' the Centipede said, grinning away as usual. 'I don't mean to be rude, but I think it is ridiculous to have ears on the sides of one's head. It certainly looks ridiculous. You ought to take a peek in the mirror some day and see for yourself.'

  'Pest!' cried the Earthworm. 'Why must you always be so rude and rambunctious to everyone? You ought to apologize to James at once.'

  Twenty-five

  James didn't want the Earthworm and the Centipede to get into another argument, so he said quickly to the Earthworm, 'Tell me, do you play any kind of music?'

  'No, but I do other things, some of which are really quite extraordinary' the Earthworm said, brightening.

  'Such as what?' asked James.

  'Well,' the Earthworm said. 'Next time you stand in a field or in a garden and look around you, then just remember this: that every grain of soil upon the surface of the land, every tiny little bit of soil that you can see has actually passed through the body of an Earthworm during the last few years! Isn't that wonderful?'

  'It's not possible!' said James.

  'My dear boy, it's a fact.'

  'You mean you actually swallow soil?'

  'Like mad,' the Earthworm said proudly. 'In one end and out the other.'

  'But what's the point?'

  'What do you mean, what's the point?'

  'Why do you do it?'

  'We do it for the farmers. It makes the soil nice and light and crumbly so that things will grow well in it. If you really want to know, the farmers couldn't do without us. We are essential. We are vital. So it is only natural that the farmer should love us. He loves us even more, I believe, than he loves the Ladybird.'

  'The Ladybird!' said James, turning to look at her. 'Do they love you, too?'

  'I am told that they do,' the Ladybird answered modestly, blushing all over. 'In fact, I understand that in some places the farmers love us so much that they go out and buy live Ladybirds by the sackful and take them home and set them free in their fields. They are very pleased when they have lots of Ladybirds in their fields.'

  'But why?' James asked.

  'Because we gobble up all the nasty little insects that are gobbling up all the farmer's crops. It helps enormously, and we ourselves don't charge a penny for our services.'

  'I think you're wonderful,' James told her. 'Can I ask you one special question?'

  'Please do.'

  'Well, is it really true that I can tell how old a Ladybird is by counting her spots?'

  'Oh no, that's just a children's story,' the Ladybird said. 'We never change our spots. Some of us, of course, are born with more spots than others, but we never change them. The number of spots that a Ladybird has is simply a way of showing which branch of the family she belongs to. I, for example, as you can see for yourself, am a Nine-Spotted Ladybird. I am very lucky. It is a fine thing to be.'

  'It is, indeed,' said James, gazing at the beautiful scarlet shell with the nine black spots on it.

  'On the other hand,' the Ladybird went on, 'some of my less fortunate relatives have no more than two spots altogether on their shells! Can you imagine that? They are called Two-Spotted Ladybirds, and very common and ill-mannered they are, I regret to say. And then, of course, you have the Five-Spotted Ladybirds as well. They are much nicer than the Two-Spotted ones, although I myself find them a trifle too saucy for my taste.'

  'But they are all of them loved?' said James.

  'Yes,' the Ladybird answered quietly. 'They are all of them loved.'

  'It seems that almost everyone around here is loved!' said James. 'How nice this is!'

  'Not me!' cried the Centipede happily. 'I am a pest and I'm proud of it! Oh, I am such a shocking dreadful pest!'

  'Hear, hear,' the Earthworm said.

  'But what about you, Miss Spider?' asked James. 'Aren't you also much loved in the world?'

  'Alas, no,' Miss Spider answered, sighing long and loud. 'I am not loved at all. And yet I do nothing but good. All day long I catch flies and mosquitoes in my webs. I am a decent person.'

  'I know you are,' said James.

  'It is very unfair the way we Spiders are treated,' Miss Spider went on. 'Why, only last week your own horrible Aunt Sponge flushed my poor dear father down the plug-hole in the bathtub.'

  'Oh, how awful!' cried James.

  'I watched the whole thing from a corner up in the ceiling,' Miss Spider murmured. 'It was ghastly. We never saw him again.' A large tear rolled down her cheek and fell with a splash on the floor.

  'But is it not very unlucky to kill a spider?' James inquired, looking around at the others.

  'Of course it's unlucky to kill a spider!' shouted the Centipede. 'It's about the unluckiest thing anyone can do. Look what happened