“Now you would think,” said a yellow jacket, buzzing up excitedly, “you would really think that Vespa might mention the fact that other wasps exist, but not she. Now I want to tell you, the white-faced hornet _isn’t_ the whole thing. There are yellow jackets too.”
“We have eyes,” said Madame Vespa, “but go ahead and talk, and get through, for pity’s sake.”
“Yes, I mean to talk, and I shall get through when I please. We always insist that people shall respect our rights, and they generally do or—something happens. Our nests are quite as remarkable as Vespa’s, though we do not hang them from trees, as she is in the habit of doing. Our cousin, Mrs. Polistes, also makes a paper nest, but she builds only a layer of cells, with not a sign of a wall about them. Any one can look right in on her private life.”
“I’m quite willing they should,” spoke up Mrs. Polistes, a long, slender brown wasp, with a yellow line around her body. “I could wall up my house if I wished to, but I _don’t_ and I _won’t_; so there.”
“They all have awful tempers, haven’t they?” said Ruth to Mrs. Horntail.
“Tempers?” repeated that lady. “They are perfect pepper pots, though I must say Mrs. Polistes isn’t usually as bad as the others.”
“I am talking,” called the yellow jacket, “and the rest of the audience will please keep still. As I was saying, though I doubt if you all heard it, there are other members of our family who have not been mentioned yet. We have miners, masons, and carpenters just like the bees. Of course they are solitary, and——”
“I object!” interrupted Mrs. Muddauber. “I won’t be bunched in with ever so many others. I will speak for myself.”
She was quite graceful, with a waist as slender as a thread, but she jerked her wings about in such a nervous and fidgety fashion that Mrs. Horntail declared she must have St. Vitus’s dance.
“I haven’t any such thing,” answered Mrs. Muddauber, angrily. “I haven’t any time to dance. I’m nervous, that’s all. Anybody would be nervous with all the work I have to do, and my mate such a lazy fellow that he never thinks of lending me a helping mandible in making my home. He says he doesn’t live very long, and wants to enjoy himself while he can. Speaking of houses, I don’t approve of paper ones. I always make mine of mud. I’m a mason, you see. I get one room finished, and lay an egg in it. Then I go to market to get my baby’s dinner.”