Colibri shrugged her shoulder.
"Do you hear something?"
"Nothing." With a birdlike movement, again Colibri drew back her little oval-shaped head with its pretty parting and the short growth of tiny curls on the nape of her neck where her plaits began, and again curled herself up into a ball. "Nothing."
"Nothing! Then now I'll ..." Kuzma Vassilyevitch craned forward towards Colibri but at once pulled back his hand. There was a drop of blood on his finger. "What foolishness is this!" he cried, shaking his finger. "Your everlasting pins! And the devil of a pin it is!" he added, looking at the long, golden pin which Colibri slowly thrust into her sash. "It's a regular dagger, it's a sting.... Yes, yes, it's your sting, and you are a wasp, that's what you are, a wasp, do you hear?"
Apparently Colibri was much pleased at Kuzma Vasselyevitch's comparison; she went off into a thin laugh and repeated several times over:
"Yes, I will sting ... I will sting."
Kuzma Vassilyevitch looked at her and thought: "She is laughing but her face is melancholy.
"Look what I am going to show you," he said aloud.
"Tso?"
"Why do you say tso? Are you a Pole?"