“Certainly,” said Maya, “I think....”
“The firm belief you express in my importance as a poet really overwhelms me. I thank you.—But I must be going now, for solitude is the poet’s pride. Farewell.”
“Farewell,” echoed Maya, who really didn’t know just what the little fellow had been after.
“Well,” she thought, “he knows. Perhaps he’s not full grown yet; he certainly isn’t large.” She looked after him, as he hastened up the branch. His wee legs were scarcely visible; he looked as though he were moving on low rollers.
Maya turned her gaze away, back to the golden field of grain over which the butterflies were playing. The field and the butterflies gave her ever so much more pleasure than the poetry of Alois, ladybird and poet.
[ CHAPTER XIII]
THE FORTRESS
How happily the day had begun and how miserably it was to end!
Before the horror swept upon her, Maya had formed a very remarkable acquaintance. It was in the afternoon near a big old water-butt. She was sitting amid the scented elder blossoms, which lay mirrored in the placid dark surface of the butt, and a robin redbreast was warbling overhead, so sweetly and merrily that Maya thought it was a shame, a crying shame that she, a bee, could not make friends with the charming songsters. The trouble was, they were too big and ate you up.