but Little Ant Red she lived on a leaf up a tree."

"I thought they always crept into houses," urged Bobaday.

"This one didn't. She lived on a leaf up a tree. And these two ants
run against each other in everything. When they met in the grass
they'd stand up on their hind feet and shake hands as friendly as you
please, but as soon as their backs was turned they'd talk! Big Ant
Black said Little Ant Red was always a meddling, and everybody knowed
her son was drowned in under the orchard cider-press where his mother
sent him to snuff round. And Little Ant Red she used to tell how Ant
Black was so graspin' she tried to carry that cider-press off and
hide it in her hole.

"They had all the neighbors takin' sides. There was a yellow-back
spider. He took up for Ant Red; he hoped to get a taste of her, and
Ant Black he knowed was big enough to bite him unless he was mighty
soople in wrappin' the web around her. Every mornin' when the dew
stood in beads on his net he told Ant Red they was tears he shed
about her troubles, and she run up and down and all around, talkin'
like a sawmill, but keepin' just off the web. And there was Old
Grasshopper, he sided with Ant Red, and so did Miss Green Katydid.
But all the beetles, and them bugs that lived under the bark of the
old stump, they took up for Ant Black, 'cause she was handy. And the
snake-feeder was on her side.

"Well, it run along, feelin's gittin' harder and harder, till Ant
Black she jumped up and kitched Ant Red fussin' round her cow pasture
one night, and then the cows began to give bloody milk, and then Ant
Black she give out that Ant Red was a witch.