The Ant, the Grasshopper and Eladio

Dear friends from EF. I have translated a text from Spanish into English and I would need that you correct its indirect speech version. I don’t know if that kind of task is appropriate for this forum, so I would understand if you feel reluctant to help me. If you want to correct the direct speech version too, then I will appreciate that very very much.

Anyway, thank you in advance,

Eladio

The Ant and the Grasshopper

I will tell you the story of the ant and the grasshopper. It is a cold winter’s day and an ant is bringing out some grains of corn that he gathered in the summer as he wants to dry them. A grasshopper who is very hungry sees him and says, “Give me a few grains of corn; I am dying of hunger”.

“But” says the ant, “What did you do in the summer? Didn’t you store up any corn?”

“No”, replies the grasshopper, “I was too busy”

“What did you do?”, says the ant.

“I sang all day”, answers the grasshopper.

“If you sang all summer”, says the ant, “you can dance all winter”

Now, using indirect speech. I wanted to begin with: “The writer said that…

The writer said that he would tell us the story of the ant and the grasshopper. It was a cold winter’s day and an ant was bringing out some grains of corn that he gathered in the summer as he wanted to dry them. A grasshopper that was very hungry saw the ant and told him to give her a few grains of corn because she was dying of hunger.

But the ant asked the grasshopper what she had done in the summer and if she had not stored up any corn. The grasshopper replied that she had not, that she had been too busy. So, the ant asked what she had done, to which the grasshopper said that she had sung all day. Then the ant replied that if she had sung all summer, she could dance all winter.

Eladio