“Oh! What do you doubt?”
“I was born doubting. I must doubt.”
Maya stared at him in wide-eyed bewilderment. What did he mean, what could he possibly mean? She couldn’t for the life of her make out, but she did not want to pry too curiously into his private affairs.
“For one thing,” said Thomas after a pause, “for one thing I doubt whether you have chosen a good place to rest in. Don’t you know what’s over there in the big willow?”
“No.”
“You see! I doubted right away if you knew. The city of the hornets is over there.”
Maya turned deathly white and nearly fell off the elder blossoms. In a voice shaking with fright, she asked just where the city was.
“Do you see that old nesting-box for starlings, there in the shrubbery near the trunk of the willow-tree? It’s so poorly placed that I doubted from the first whether starlings would ever move in. If a bird-house isn’t set with its door facing the sunrise, every decent bird will think twice before taking possession. Well, the hornets have entrenched themselves in it. It’s the biggest hornets’ fortress in the country. You as a bee certainly ought to know of the place. Why, the hornets are brigands who lie in wait for you bees. So, at least, I have observed.”
Maya scarcely heard what he was saying. There, showing clear against the green, she saw the brown walls of the fortress. She almost stopped breathing.
“I must fly away,” she cried.