It's Friday.

Five Sunday Morning

The next morning Mario came back to the newsstand with his father. Usually he slept late on Sunday, but today he was up the matchbox and looked in. There was Chester, lying on the Kleenex. The cricket wasn’t asleep though—he had been waiting for Mario. He chirped once.

Papa smiled when he heard the chirp. “He must like it here,” he said. “He didn’t run away in the night.”

“I knew he wouldn’t,” said Mario.

For breakfast Mario had brought a crust of bread, a lump of sugar, and a cold Brussels sprout. He wasn’t quite sure what crickets liked, so he decided to try him out on everything. Chester jumped over Mario’s little finger into the palm of his hand where the food was. Back in the meadow his usual diet was leaves and grass, and every now and then a piece of tender bark, but here in New York he was eating bread and candy and liverwurst, and finding them very tasty at that.

When Chester had had as much as he wanted, Mario wrapped what was left in a piece of wax paper and put it inside the cash register. Then he slipped the cricket back inside the matchbox and took him over to one of the lunch counters.

“Look,” he said to the counterman. “This is my new pet. He’s a cricket.”

The counterman’s name was Mickey. He had red, curly hair. “That’s a fine cricket,” he said, peering in at Chester.

“May he have a glass of water, please?” asked Mario.

Mickey said, “Sure,” and gave him the glass. Mario held Chester by the hindlegs and lowered him carefully until his head was just above the water. Chester dunked his head in and had a big drink. Then he pulled it out, took a breath, and went in for another.

“Why don’t you let him stand on the rim?” said Mickey. He was very interested in watching Chester, since he had never seen a cricket drinking from a glass before.

Mario set his pet on the edge of the glass and gently drew his hand away. Chester bent down to try to reach the water. But the glass was too slippery. He toppled in. Mario hauled him out and dried him off with a paper napkin. But Chester didn’t mind the dunking. He had fallen in the brook a couple of times back in Connecticut. And he knew it would take him a while to get used to city life—like drinking out of glasses.

“How would the cricket like a soda?” asked Mickey.

“Very much, I think,” said Mario.

“What flavor?” Mickey asked.

Mario thought a minute. “Strawberry, I guess,” he answered. That happened to be his own favorite flavor.

Mickey took a tablespoon and put a drop of strawberry syrup into it. Then he added a drop of cream, a squirt of sodawater, and a dip of ice cream about as big as your fingernail. That is how you make a cricket’s strawberry soda. He also made one for Mario-a little larger than Chester’s, but not too big, because it was free.

When the sodas were gone, Mickey took a paper cup and wrote CRICKET on it. “This is his own cup,” he said to Mario.“You can come over and get fresh water any time.”

“Thanks, Mickey,” said Mario. He put Chester back in the matchbox. “I’ve got to go to get him a house now.”

“Bring him back soon,” Mickey called after them. I’ll make him a sundae too.”

At the newsstand Papa Bellini was talking to Mr. Smedley. Mr. Smedley was the best customer the Bellinis had. He was a music teacher who came to buy Musical America at ten-thirty in the morning on the last Sunday of every month, on his way home from church. No matter what the weather was like, he always carried a long, neatly rolled umbrella. As usual, Papa and Mr. Smedley had been talking about opera. More than anything else the Bellini family liked Italian opera. Every Saturday during the winter, when the opera was broadcast, they would sit clustered around the radio in the newsstand, straining to hear the music above the din of the subway station.

“Good morning, Mr. Smedley,” said Mario. “Guess what I have.”

Mr. Smedley couldn’t guess.

“A cricket!” said Mario, and held Chester up for the music teacher to see.

“How delightful!” said Mr. Smedley. “What an enchanting little creature.”

“Do you want to hold him?” asked Mario.

Mr. Smedley shrank back. “Oh, I don’t think so,” he said. “I was stung by a bee when I was eight years old, and since then I’ve been a little timid about insects.”

“He won’t sting you,” said Mario. He tipped the matchbox up and Chester fell out in Mr. Smedley’s hand. It made the music teacher shiver to feel him. “I heard him chirping last night,” said Mario.

“Do you think he’d chirp for me?” asked Mr. Smedley.

“Maybe,” said Mario. He put Chester on the counter and said, “Chirp, please.” Then, so Chester couldn’t misunderstand, he made a chirping noise himself. It didn’t sound much like a cricket, but Chester got the idea. He uncrossed his wings and made a real chirp.

Papa and Mr. Smedley exclaimed with delight. “That was a perfect middle C,” said Mr. Smedley. He raised his hand like an orchestra conductor, and when he lowered it, Chester chirped on the down beat.

“Do you want to give him music lessons, Mr. Smedley?” asked Mario.

“What could I teach him?” said Mr. Smedley. “He’s already been taught by the greatest teacher of all, Mario—Nature herself. She gave him his wings to rub together and the instinct to make such lovely sounds. I could add nothing to the genius of this little black Orpheus.”

“Who is Orpheus, Mr. Smedley?” asked Mario.

“Orpheus was the greatest musician who ever lived,” said the music teacher. “Long, long ago he played on a harp—and he played it so beautifully that not only human beings but animals and even the rocks and trees and waterfalls stopped their work to listen to him. The lion left off chasing the deer, the rivers paused in their courses, and the wind held its breath. The whole world was silent.”

Mario didn’t know what to say. He liked that picture of everyone keeping quiet to listen. “That must have been awfully good playing,” he said finally.

Mr. Smedley smiled. “It was,” he said. “Perhaps someday your cricket will play as well. I prophesy great things for a creature of such ability, Mario.”

“Your hear?” said Papa Bellini. “He could be famous, maybe.”

Mario heard, all right. And he remembered what Mr. Smedley had said later on that summer. But right now he had other things on his mind. “Papa, can I go down to Chinatown and get my cricket a house?” he asked.

“A house? What kind of a house?” said his father.

“Jimmy Lebovski said that the Chinese like crickets very much, and they build special cages for them,” Mario explained.

“It’s Sunday,” said Papa. “There won’t be any stores open.”

“Well, there may be one or two open,” said Mario. “It’s Chinatown—and besides, I could see where to go later on.”

“All right, Mario,” Papa Bellini began, “but—

“But Mario wasn’t waiting for any “buts.” He scooped Chester into the matchbox, shouted “Goodbye, Mr. Smedley” over his shoulder, and headed for the stairway leading to the downtown subway trains. Papa and Mr. Smedley watched him go. Then Papa turned to the music teacher with a happy, hopeless expression on his face, shrugged his shoulders, and the two of them began talking about opera again.