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T HE Ants and the Grasshoppers lived together in the great field. The Ants were busy all the time gathering a store of grain to lay by for winter use. They gave themselves so little pleasure that their merry neighbors, the Grasshoppers, began at last to take scarcely any notice of them.
When the frost came, it put an end to the work of the Ants and the chirping and merrymaking of the Grasshoppers. But one fine winter's day, when the Ants were employed in spreading their grain in the sun to dry, a Grasshopper, who was nearly perishing with hunger, chanced to pass by.
"Good day to you, kind neighbor," Said she; "will you not lend me a little food? I will certainly pay you before this time next year."
"How does it happen that you have no food of your own?" asked an old Ant. "There was an abundance in the field where we lived side by side all summer, ad your people seemed to be active enough. What were you doing, pray?
"Oh," said the Grasshopper, forgetting his hunger, "I sang all the day long, and all the night, too."
"Well, then," interrupted the Ant, "I must not deprive my own family for you. If Grasshoppers find it so gay to sing away the summer, they must starve in winter," and she went on with her work, all the while singing the old song, "We ants never borrow; we ants never lend."