By dusk the lawn in front of the music school no longer sounded like a friendly argument. The crickets had stands no taller than a thimble, and each one waited, quite solemnly, for a page that smelled of clover.
We asked at the kiosk across the street. "I thought someone had left a toy," said a woman with a loaf under her arm. "Then the whole border turned a leaf at once, and I clapped without meaning to. It seemed the polite thing."
A neighbor had whispered that the school was hiring insects for overtime. The teacher, when we found her by the open window, only smiled. "They already knew the tunes," she said. "They just wanted somewhere to put the notes so they would not blow into the pansies."
The next evening a few students came back with extra stands, no larger than buttons, in case a late arrival needed a place in the second row.