“No, indeed. Workers follow and pick up every one. They take good care of those precious eggs, too, and when they hatch into helpless grubs, without wings or feet, our work begins in earnest. Every morning we carry them into the sunshine, and bring them down again at night. We fondle them too, and keep them clean by licking them all over. Then of course they must be fed, and, like other babies, they prefer milk.”
“And I know where you get the milk!” cried Ruth, all excitement. “It is from the aphides, isn’t it? The cicada told me. The aphides are his cousins. He doesn’t think so much of them, but he says you do.”
“Well, why shouldn’t we? They give us the most delicious milk. We have a fine herd of aphides now pasturing on a stalk of sweetbrier, and when Winter comes we will keep their eggs down in our nest, and put them on the sweetbrier in the Spring, so that the little aphides which hatch from them will have plenty to eat. Yes, and we may even build tiny sheds for them to keep their enemies from reaching them.”
“I wonder if you intend to talk all day?” broke in a sharp voice. “I sha’n’t wait another minute.”
It was not Mrs. Horntail, as Ruth thought at first, but Madame Vespa Maculata, or, in plain English, the white-faced hornet, and, as she was a fiery lady, no one disputed her when she said:
“I am the largest and most distinguished of my family, and I build a nest whose delicacy and beauty make it a wonderful piece of insect architecture. It is proper that I should speak first, and I will speak right now.”
“Speak, by all means,” said the little ant. “I have quite finished.”
“Then move,” answered Vespa; “I need space.”
The whole audience gave it to her, including Ruth, who did not edge up close, as she did to the other speakers.
“It is this way,” she whispered to Belinda. “Those sharp people are very interesting, but it is better not to get too near until you know them quite well.”
“I suppose,” Madame Vespa was saying, “I suppose we wasps can scarcely be called general favourites. We have a sting, you see, but, my friends, that was intended for laying eggs, and if we use it on people it is because they meddle in our business. It is our way. We _will_ sting those who bother us. Now, in our community—for we are social wasps—the female is unquestionably the better half. We have our rights and we insist on them. My mate was a good-for-nothing fellow, like the rest of them. I didn’t marry him until Fall, and he soon left me, and did nothing but perch around in the sunshine with others like him, and I had all the hard work of the home. Finally he died. I suppose he couldn’t help that, but I doubt if he would have made an effort anyhow. Well, reproaches are of no use now, for he is very much dead by this time. I have had a whole Winter’s sleep since I saw him last. We queen wasps always sleep in Winter. We are the only ones of the colony who do not die when cold weather comes. You see, our community is not like the bees. It lasts only for a Summer, and each Spring the queens wake up and start a new one. That was what I did. I slept in the crevice of a barn and left it full of plans. You can imagine the task before me, but I was plucky and soon chose a tree to suit me. My house was made of paper, and I should like to say right here that we wasps are the first paper makers in the world, for while Egypt still traced her records in stone, or on the inner bark of the papyrus, my ancestors were manufacturing paper, that man has finally learned to make in the same way. For paper is only vegetable fibre reduced to a pulp and pressed into sheets.”