Once upon a time there was a worthy set of ants, who lived together as happily as possible in their little town at the foot of a fine old oak-tree.
They were honest, peaceable folk, and always did as the three queen ants who ruled over them told them to do.
The young men stayed quietly at home until it was time for them to get married, and the young ladies, who had nothing else to do, did the same.
As for the working people—But here’s a curious state of things! You’ll never find a working “man” in an ant city as long as you live, for all the workers are females, even the soldiers, you may take my word for that!
Well, as for these, they were at it morning, noon, and night, digging and building and fetching food for the whole town, looking after the eggs—of which there were so many you could never have counted them—and seeing that all the baby ants were quite happy and comfortable.
Now, things would have gone on very well indeed if other people had only left these worthy ants alone. But they did not—and this is where my story really begins.
One fine day a set of ants belonging to quite another tribe came to the forest, and built themselves a town not far from the first.
And these ants—it grieves me to write it—were far from peaceful and honest like their neighbors. To tell the truth, they were nothing more nor less than robbers.
They had not been very long in the place before their soldiers—all womenfolk, too!—made a raid on the town of the mild and harmless ants, and carried off all the girl babies they could lay hands on. And the moment the children were old enough to work, they were made into slaves, and had to do all the roughest and hardest work.
Well, you may guess there was sorrow in the town of the peaceful ants. They were too weak to fight their foes, and so they just had to sit down and bear it as best they could.