"Not yet," replied the Butterfly, "they are going to be otherwise engaged; 'tis when they are idle, or at play, that I have most reason to be alarmed, and besides here are a great many more of my race frisking about, though among ever so great a number, I am the most admired."
The Bee smiled at this discovery of vanity in his friend, though he made no reply, and as the children began clearing the field at the other end of it, they continued a little longer to enjoy the sweets they were so soon to be deprived of, till the shades of the evening began to advance, when the Bee proposed returning home, and bade adieu to those charming flowers from which he had gathered health and strength, and a sufficient stock of honey to take home with him.
"Where do you repose for the night?" said he to his friend, "have you no settled place of abode, or do you rest upon the first flower you meet with?"
"I generally pass the night under a green leaf, or in the cup of a flower," replied the Butterfly, "and may this evening find a place to repose in near your habitation, if you have no objection."
"I should be glad of your company within it," returned the Bee, "were it large enough to admit us both, but what do you live upon? cannot you taste some of the provision I am going to carry home? you shall be very welcome."
The Butterfly testified his thanks by a fluttering of his wings; "but I do not particularly relish that food," said he, "and you would perhaps wonder what it is we do eat, for it is no uncommon opinion that we live upon air; however, in our reptile state, we make up for our little eating now; were you to see the devastation we make in the vegetable world, you would be surprised; three or four dozen of us will destroy a bed of cabbages in an hour or two, and we often strip a shrub of all its leaves in the course of a morning."
"And do you boast of this?" replied the Bee; "surely it is exulting in mischief."
"It is our nature," returned the thoughtless Butterfly; "and what is the mischief, as you call it, compared to that which men are daily doing? do they not destroy us by thousands, whenever they have an opportunity? and why should you, of all others, plead for them, who, when you have spent your lives in their service, and procured for them that food which they can obtain from no other quarter, burn and destroy your hives and yourselves too? Oh! I have passed one of these monuments of their ungrateful cruelty, and seen the mangled remains of your fellow-creatures till my wings have quite trembled again, and yet you never do them harm; they form your habitation, and encourage you to build in them by pretending to shelter you from all evil, yet after all this fancied kindness, if they think you are too old to labour for them any longer, as a reward for all you have done, they set fire to your houses, and destroy thousands of you in the flames! talk no more of mischief in eating a few cabbages, or devouring the leaves of a tree."
"These are shocking truths," replied the Bee, "my blood runs cold to think of it, and yet such is my nature that, though I know I am safe from such devastations where I now am, I would rather add my labours to the common stock of my native hive, could I but find the way to return to it, and share the fate of my fellow-labourers, if such a fate awaits them; but who knows that we may not escape? it is not every Bee that is thus destroyed."
"Nature," returned his friend, "has armed you with a defensive weapon with which I think you might soon repel your destroyers: but as for us poor Butterflies, we can do nothing to defend ourselves."