Again getting to work, she planed off a pellet of good sound wood—­it looked like a nail-scrape, the mark she made—­and masticating it and moistening it with saliva, whirred back like a homing aeroplane to her city in the making.

There was a whir and a buzz as she passed through the portals of her main gate from the light of day, and she reappeared again, backing out, “looking daggers,” as we say, and brandishing her poisoned dart—­her sting, if you insist, on the end of her tail—­in the air.  But she still hung on to her pellet.

Presumably some unlucky visitor had called in her absence.  More sounds of concentrated argument followed, and finally there fell out, rather than rushed out, a small and amazingly slender black wasp, one of those hermits who seem to consecrate their lives to lonely working for a family they never see.  This unhappy one slid down the bank, curled up at the bottom, uncurled, curled up again, and—­remained curled.  Apparently her day’s work was done, which comes of falling foul of the yellow flag.

Arrived inside, at her hallowed chamber, our queen carefully selected a rootlet in the roof—­not just any old rootlet, mark you; never any “old” anything, you will notice, but a good, sound, well-found rootlet that you could hang five or six pounds’ weight to; indeed, three rootlets before she had finished.  To these rootlets she fastened—­gummed would be a more correct word—­her pellet of wasp-paper, in the form of a thin layer, and hurried away, singing, for more.  This was, so to speak, the foundation-stone of the city, laid, be it noticed, not haphazard—­our queen never did any business that way—­but with mathematical regard as to what was to follow.  In very fact, too, it was the foundation-stone of her city, only upside-down, though that is nothing.  Wasps always do things that way, which is unlike ants, those other and greater city builders.

Back came the queen very soon with another load, and pasted that—­thin—­to the first layer, hurrying, bustling, humming a happy song continuously to herself.  Then away again for more, and in the process to a lively battle with a robber-fly, who appeared set upon robbing her of her blood.  It tried, like the beetle, to stalk her and pounce upon her back, what time she was planing out wood for paper-pulp; but her back wasn’t there when it pounced, and her jaws were.  It “waited on,” hovering like a falcon, and twice as keen, and when she got to work again, dropped like a hurled lance-head, only to be met with jaws, wide and ready, as before.

It went away, watching from afar—­far for an insect—­from “the little speedwell’s darling blue” upon the hedge-bank, and just as she was moistening the load, gathered ready to fly off, delivered its final ultimatum—­a marvelously persistent murderer.  This time it, or, rather, she, was received with the point—­the poisoned point—­and, turning like a spent lightning-flash