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“Those spiteful Hornets! I detest them!”

“Nevertheless, dear Miss Katy, one does not like to offend the Hornets.”

“No, one can’t. There are those five Misses Hornet–dreadful old maids!–as full of spite as they can live. You may be sure they will every one come, and be looking about to make spiteful remarks. Put down the Hornets, though.”

“How about the Mosquitoes!” said the colonel.

“Those horrid Mosquitoes–they are dreadfully plebeian! Can’t one cut them?”

“Well dear Miss Katy,” said the colonel, “if you ask my candid opinion as a friend, I should say not. There’s young Mosquito, who graduated last year, has gone into literature, and is connected with some of our leading papers, and they say he carries the sharpest pen of all the writers. It won’t do to offend him.”

“And so I suppose we must have his old aunts, and all six of his sisters, and all his dreadfully common relations.”

“It is a pity,” said the colonel; “but one must pay one’s tax to society.”

Just at this moment the conference was interrupted by a visitor, Miss Keziah Cricket, who came in with her work-bag on her arm to ask a subscription for a poor family of Ants who had just had their house hoed up in clearing the garden-walks.

“How stupid of them,” said Katy, “not to know better than to put their house in the garden-walk; that’s just like those Ants.”

“Well, they are in great trouble; all their stores destroyed, and their father killed–cut quite in two by a hoe.”

“How very shocking! I don’t like to hear of such disagreeable things; it affects my nerves terribly. Well, I’m sure I haven’t anything to give. Mamma said yesterday she was sure she didn’t know how our bills were to be paid; and there’s my green satin with point- lace yet to come home.” And Miss Katy-did shrugged her shoulders and affected to be very busy with Colonel Katy-did, in just the way that young ladies sometimes do when they wish to signify to visitors that they had better leave.

Little Miss Cricket perceived how the case stood, and so hopped briskly off, without giving herself even time to be offended. “Poor extravagant little thing!” said she to herself, “it was hardly worth while to ask her.”

“Pray, shall you invite the Crickets?” said Colonel Katy-did.

“Who? I? Why, colonel, what a question! Invite the Crickets? Of what can you be thinking?”

“And shall you not ask the Locusts, and the Grasshoppers?”

“Certainly. The Locusts, of course,–a very old and distinguished family; and the Grasshoppers are pretty well, and ought to be asked. But we must draw a line somewhere,–and the Crickets! why, it’s shocking even to think of!”

“I thought they were nice, respectable people.”

“Oh, perfectly nice and respectable,–very good people, in fact, so far as that goes. But then you must see the difficulty.”

“My dear cousin, I am afraid you must explain.”

“Why, their COLOUR, to be sure. Don’t you see?”

“Oh!” said the colonel. “That’s it, is it? Excuse me, but I have been living in France, where these distinctions are wholly unknown, and I have not yet got myself in the train of fashionable ideas here.”

“Well, then, let me teach you,” said Miss Katy. “You know we republicans go for no distinctions except those created by Nature herself, and we found our rank upon COLOUR, because that is clearly a thing that none has any hand in but our Maker. You see?”

“Yes; but who decides what colour shall be the reigning colour?”

“I’m surprised to hear the question! The only true colour–the only proper one–is OUR colour, to be sure. A lovely pea-green is the precise shade on which to found aristocratic distinction. But then we are liberal;–we associate with the Moths, who are gray; with the Butterflies, who are blue-and-gold coloured; with the Grasshoppers, yellow and brown; and society would become dreadfully mixed if it were not fortunately ordered that the Crickets are black as jet. The fact is, that a class to be looked down upon is necessary to all elegant society; and if the Crickets were not black, we could not keep them down, because, as everybody knows, they are often a great deal cleverer than we are. They have a vast talent for music and dancing; they are very quick at learning, and would be getting to the very top of the ladder if we once allowed them to climb. But their being black is a convenience; because, as long as we are green and they black, we have a superiority that can never be taken from us. Don’t you see now?”