My Ant lives in the country and keeps a cow. I am ashamed to say that, although I have always known she was a most interesting person, I never went to see her until last week.
I am afraid I should not have gone then, if I had not found an account of her, and her house, and her cow, in a book which I was reading.
“Dear me,” said I, “and there she has been living so near me all this time, and I never have been to call on her.”
To tell the truth, it was much worse than that; I had often met her in the street, and had taken such a dislike to her looks that I always brushed by as quickly as possible without speaking to her.
I had great difficulty in finding her house, though it is quite large. She belongs to a very peculiar family; they prefer to live in the dark; so they have no windows in their houses, only doors; and the doors are nothing but holes in the roof.
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The houses are built in the shape of a mound, and are not more than ten inches high. They are built out of old bits of wood, dead leaves, straw, old bones; in short, every sort of old thing that they find, they stick in the walls of their houses. Their best rooms are all down cellar; and dark enough they must be on a rainy day, when the doors are always kept shut tight.
But I ought to have told you about my Ant herself before I told you about her house. When you hear what an odd person she is, you will not be surprised that she lives in such an outlandish house.
To begin with, I must tell you that she belongs to a family that never does any work.
You’d never suppose so, to see her. I really think she is the queerest-looking creature I ever met.
In the first place, her skin is of a dark brown color, darker than an Indian’s, and she has six legs. Of course she can walk three times as fast as if she had only two,—but I would rather go slower and be more like other people.
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She has frightful jaws, with which she does all sorts of things besides eating. She uses them for scissors, tweezers, pickaxes, knife and fork, and in case of a battle, for swords.
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Then she has growing out of the front part of her head two long slender horns, which she keeps moving about all the time, and with which she touches everything she wishes to understand.
The first thing she does, when she meets you, is todecoration142decoration bend both these horns straight towards you, and feel of you. It is quite disagreeable,—almost as bad as shaking hands with strangers.
My Ant’s name is Fornica Rufa. If I knew her better I should call her Ant Ru, for short. But I do not expect ever to know her very well. She evidently does not like to be intimate with anybody but her own family; and I am not surprised, for I was never in any house so overrun with people as hers is. I wondered how they knew themselves apart.
When I went to see her last week I found her just going out, and I thought perhaps that was one reason that she didn’t take any more notice of me.
“How do you do, Ant?” said I. “I am spending the summer near by, and thought I would like to become acquainted with you. I hear you have a very curious cow, and I have a great desire to see it.”
“Humph!” said she, and snapped her horns up and down, as she always does when she is displeased, I find.
“I hope it will not give you any trouble to show herdecoration143decoration to me. You must be very proud of having such a fine cow. Perhaps you are on the way to milking now, and if so I should be most happy to go with you.”
“Humph!” said my Ant again. At least I think that was what she said. It looked like it, but I can’t say that I heard any sound.
But she turned short on her heels (I suppose she has heels), and plunged into the woods at the right, stopping and looking back at me as if she expected me to follow. So I stepped along after her as fast as I could, and said, “Thank you; I suppose this is the way to the pasture.”
My Ant said nothing, but went ahead, snapping her horns furiously.
“Oh, well,” thought I to myself, “you are an uncivil Ant............