[Illustration: "A shrew-mouse, thirsting for blood, but who got poison instead">[
She found the day already in full swing when she rose, buzzing, from her front-gate, late—for wasps hate early morning chill, like Red Indians—and, circling once, swung straight away. She jumped into full hustle right off, you see. She did not merely work; she superworked. Forced to short hours by her constitution, she had to make up for it in the time she got, and she did. She allowed nothing to stop her. If anything tried to, she mostly stopped it, for there was no compromise about this nation-builder; she reached her goal every time.
It was on this journey that a spotted fly-catcher, sitting on a gatepost, made a Euclid figure at her in midair as she passed. She had not power to fight the bird's beak, and her poison-dagger was useless here; nor do fly-catchers often miss. This, however, was an occasion when one of them did—by an eighth of an inch—and only some electric-spark-like dodging on the part of the insect in the air made even that one miss possible. It was so quick, you could not see what happened.
That day the cross of cells in this budding city was developed further, and a low wall built round each cell. Moreover, more cells were built, always taking the cross as the center of all things—six-sided cells, with a low, incomplete wall, or, rather, parapet, partitioning each off, to the number of about twenty-four cells in all. Each cell was closed, of course, at the top, the top being its floor, and open at the bottom, the bottom being, if I may so put it, the top; for, as has already been said, wasp cities are built upside-down, and everybody walks and hangs on his head, being so fitted for the purpose. If you don't hang, you tumble straight down into the scooped-out cavity below; but nobody ever does that till he dies, for that cavity is at once the cemetery and the refuse-heap and the dust-bin of the city, a haunt of tiny ghouls—beetle, spider, and fly ghouls—and other loathsome horrors, the scavengers, hyenas, vultures, and jackals of the wasp world.
Now, after making the first cell, or, rather, the part cell, with its low parapet, the queen laid an egg—it was very minute, that egg—inside the cell, gumming it against the top, on the angle nearest the center of the city. It had to be cemented there; otherwise it would have fallen out.
In the next cell she laid an egg, too, cementing it up to the top in the same manner—always in the angle nearest the center of the city—and in the next another egg, and so on, up to the twenty-four or so. It is a little doubtful precisely how long she took over the process, because, for one thing, she made so many journeys backwards and forwards to get wood-pulp from the rails for paper manufacture—she used paper for everything; and, for another thing, she began to roof over the whole affair with a hanging umbrella made of layers of the finest paper that you ever did see—much finer than that made by the ordinary common or garden worker-wasp of the jam-pots and the stewed-fruit dish, for was she not a queen, and therefore not common in anything she did?—and it became, in consequence, rather hard to see what she really was "at." Most of the time that the sky remained cloudy she used up at this job, and also when there was a shower of rain, for she hated rain and all shadow and darkness.
Her purpose, in regard to this paper roofing, was to keep out any possible dripping that might come through the earth roof in wet weather, and to store up and multiply the heat from her body. Terrific heat, to be sure; nevertheless important in the scheme of things. When all was completed, this city, this mighty kingdom, measured about one and a half inches round.
When all was completed, also, the wasp flew out for a drink and a feed. But first she cleaned. The most fastidious cat was a grimy tramp in comparison to her in habits, and in all her spare time—goodness alone knows how she squeezed in any spare time at all during those hustling days!—her first, and generally her last, act was to clean. She could not afford dirt. To be dirty, with her, was to die even more quickly than she would, anyway; for, you see, she did not breathe through her mouth, but all over herself, so to speak—through her armor, or hair-like tubes in that same.
From bluebell to cowslip and lily she picked her way, sipping honey and humming a wicked little hum through her teeth, as it were, and on to where
Daisies pied, and violets blue,
And cuckoo buds of yellow hue,
And lady-smocks all silver white,
Do paint the meadows with delight.