"Oh, what a funny bee," she said. "You are a bee, aren't you?"
Beffa stared at her a moment, then made her a deep, mocking bow and gave a hop or two. "Yes, pretty one, which is, of course, to say, stupid one, I be a bee—just as you be, only not just so, for I be doing my work, which I don't see that you be." Then he hopped comically about, humming to himself the refrain of his song.
No one, however, paid any attention to him except Nuova, who exclaimed rather petulantly: "Oh, work, work, work; always that word!"
"Yes," said Beffa, mockingly bowing and hopping about her, "but not always that work"; imitating grotesquely for a moment Nuova's idle attitude.
"Do you call that hopping and singing work?" indignantly exclaimed Nuova. "Why don't you go and nurse babies?"
Beffa, who was again at his hopping and humming, stopped a moment to stare at her in surprise; then replied, in a sing-song: "I can't, oh, I can't nurse babies."
"Then make wax," said Nuova.
"I can't, oh, I can't make wax," hummed Beffa.
"Then build a comb, or fill cracks, or clean the floor, or"—and she pointed to the ventilating bees near them—"ventilate," persisted Nuova.
"I can't," sang again Beffa, "oh, I can't build cells, or fill cracks, or scrub floors, or—" and he broke off suddenly with a sort of catch in his voice.