“Who are you?” asked Maya. “You’re terribly exciting.”
“Why, everybody knows who I am,” said the green oddity, and grinned almost beyond the limits of his jaws.
Maya never could make out whether he spoke in fun or in earnest.
“I’m a stranger in these parts,” she replied pleasantly, “else I’m sure I’d know you.—But please note that I belong to the family of bees, and am positively not a wasp.”
“My goodness,” said the grasshopper, “one and the same thing.”
Maya couldn’t utter a sound, she was so excited.
“You’re uneducated,” she burst out at length. “Take a good look at a wasp once.”
“Why should I?” answered the green one. “What good would it do if I observed differences that exist only in people’s imagination? You, a bee, fly round in the air, sting everything you come across, and can’t hop. Exactly the same with a wasp. So where’s the difference? Hoppety-hop!” And he was gone.
“But now I am going to fly away,” thought Maya.
There he was again.