The Ant and the Grasshopper

Once upon a time, in a meadow at the bottom of a warm green field, there lived a grasshopper who played the fiddle and an ant who did not. All summer the grasshopper sat on a stem in the sun and played. He was very good. The bees slowed down to listen, and the butterflies came from three fields away. All summer the ant went up and down the same path with a grain of wheat on her back, one at a time, from the field to the store under the flat stone. "Come and sit down," the grasshopper called. "Listen to this bit." "I would like to," said the ant. "Winter is coming." "Winter is months away." "Yes," said the ant, and went back for another grain. The grasshopper laughed, and played her a tune about ants, which was funny, and she did not hear a note of it because she was already round the corner. Summer went on the way summers do, which is to say it seemed endless and then it was over. The mornings turned white. The grass went brown and lay down. The meadow that had been full of noise went quiet, the field was cut, and there was nothing left on the ground but stubble and frost. The grasshopper looked in every place he could think of. There was nothing anywhere. He was very cold, his fiddle had gone out of tune in the damp, and for the first time in his life he had no idea at all what to do. Then he remembered the ant. He found the flat stone and knocked on it, and after a while a small door opened and warm air came out, smelling of grain. "I am sorry," he said. "I laughed at you all summer." "You did," said the ant. "I have nothing put by. Not a thing." "I know," said the ant. "I watched you not do it." There was a pause. The wind went over the stubble. "Well," said the ant. "You had better come in before you freeze." So the grasshopper came in. The ant fed him all through the winter, and in exchange he played every evening in the warm dark under the stone, and the ants who had worked all summer sat and listened, and said afterwards that it had been the best winter anyone could remember. And in the spring, when the ant went out to the field, the grasshopper went with her and carried grain, and was extremely bad at it, and did it anyway. He still played. He simply did not play all day. The end.