to avoid it, found the queen hard on her heels, following all down the gay hedge-ditch, humming high, in nearly a shriek of rage.  Finally, she turned, to do battle for her life, and the two, grappling, fell as shooting-stars fall, gleaming, athwart the sun, with a brrr-r like a fused wire, and finished the job, rolling over and over on the ground—­rolling over and over among the stalks of bluebells, like the heavens “upraising from the earth.”

It is written, however, that few in the insect world can withstand a queen of the yellow devils, and in a few seconds the wasp got up and flew home again, quite unperturbed.  The robber-fly did not get up, and she was not quite unperturbed, but died as they die who are poisoned with formic acid, and very soon was still.

By the time the shadows crept across the entrance to the derelict mole-hole, warning the wasp back—­for your true wasp is a worshiper of the sun—­the queen had formed a disc of paper, and suspended there-from, in the middle, a stalk, also of paper, which widened out at its base, and became, as it were, the outlines of four six-sided cells.  The cells were in the shape of a cross—­that cross which you will always find at the foundation of the cities of the waspfolk, and, in a way, a sign or mark of their nationality—­the cross in the market-square, so to speak, outwards from which the city grew.

The queen, satisfied apparently with her new city so far, hung up and went to sleep.  When anything or anybody came to prospect for house lots, or edible victims, during the still, silent, silver night, she hummed very severely, like an electric fan, to let the intruders know who she was, and they mostly backed out again in a hurry.  If they took a step nearer the hum rose an octave, and became very wicked, and that, so far as most of them were concerned, finished it.

Two, however, there were who would not take even that hint.  One was a shrew-mouse, thirsting for blood, but who got poison instead, and next morning was found running about with his mouth somewhere concealed behind his ear, if one may be pardoned the expression, in consequence; and the other was a carnivorous beetle, in black, purple-shot armor, and armed with jaws toothed like lobsters’ claws.  The queen took some nasty scars from those same jaws before she got home with the poisoned point, a clean thrust ’twist breastplate and armlet, and the invader doubled up on the spot where he was, and had to be dragged out in the morning—­not the dawning, for the sun had well stoked up before our wasp would have anything to do with him.

[Illustration:  “A shrew-mouse, thirsting for blood, but who got poison instead”]

She found the day already in full swing when she rose, buzzing, from her front-gate, late—­for wasps hate early morning chill, like Red Indians—­and, circling once, swung straight away.  She jumped into full hustle right off, you see.  She did not merely work; she superworked.  Forced to short hours by her constitution, she had to make up for it in the time she got, and she did.  She allowed nothing to stop her.  If anything tried to, she mostly stopped it, for there was no compromise about this nation-builder; she reached her goal every time.