Twenty-four
But up on the peach itself, everyone was still happy and excited.
‘I wonder where we’ll finish up this time,’ the Earthworm said.
‘Who cares?’ they answered. ‘Seagulls always go back to the land sooner or later.’
Up and up they went, high above the highest clouds, the peach swaying gently from side to side as itfloated along.
‘Wouldn’t this be a perfect time for a little music?’ the Ladybird asked. ‘How about it, OldGrasshopper?’
‘With pleasure, dear lady,’ the Old-Green-Grasshopper¹ answered, bowing from the waist.
‘Oh, hooray! He’s going to play for us!’ they cried, and immediately the whole company satthemselves down in a circle around the Old Green Musician – and the concert began.
From the moment that the first note was struck, the audience became completely spellbound. And asfor James, never had he heard such beautiful music as this! In the garden at home on summer evenings,he had listened many times to the sound of grasshoppers² chirping³ in the grass, and he had always likedthe noise that they made. But this was a different kind of noise altogether. This was real music – chords,harmonies, tunes⁴, and all the rest of it.
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 strings⁵ of the violin, the part thatmade 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 againstthe edge of his wing with incredible⁶ skill, sometimes slowly, sometimes fast, but always with the sameeasy flowing action. It was precisely⁷ the way a clever violinist would have used his bow; and the musiccame pouring out and filled the whole blue sky around them with magic

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