When all was completed, also, the wasp flew out for a drink and a feed.  But first she cleaned.  The most fastidious cat was a grimy tramp in comparison to her in habits, and in all her spare time—­goodness alone knows how she squeezed in any spare time at all during those hustling days!—­her first, and generally her last, act was to clean.  She could not afford dirt.  To be dirty, with her, was to die even more quickly than she would, anyway; for, you see, she did not breathe through her mouth, but all over herself, so to speak—­through her armor, or hair-like tubes in that same.

From bluebell to cowslip and lily she picked her way, sipping honey and humming a wicked little hum through her teeth, as it were, and on to where

  Daisies pied, and violets blue,
  And cuckoo buds of yellow hue,
  And lady-smocks all silver white,
  Do paint the meadows with delight.

Now she toyed with a yellow oxlip, now paused at a purple lungwort; but most she went into the garden, and hovered, still as a humming-bird, among the rose-leaves and branches, especially those growing against the sun-bathed old wooden porch, and for so long that one wondered what she was doing there.  She was licking up the “honey-dew,” which, translated, is the juice exuded by the plant-lice or “green-fly,” which swarmed all over the rose-trees.  This “honey-dew” was sweet, and in great demand among such insects as had tastes that way; in fact, the enterprising ants—­who are always a decade ahead of everybody else—­were, in one place, building mud sheds over the said herds of plant-lice to prevent their precious “honey-dew” being exploited by others.

Thus a week passed, the queen fussing daily about her embryo city, adding paper covering here, strengthening a wall there, warning off an inquisitive insect somewhere else, and adding her heat to the natural stuffiness of the place, though one would scarcely have thought she could have made much difference.  At times, too, in the hot sun, she appeared here or there outside, drinking honey from some flower, or sipping “honey-dew,” much to the ants’ disgust and anger.

Then, at the end of the week, the first egg hatched out within the city, and, frankly, what came forth was not lovely.  It was a legless grub, fat, presumably blind, and helpless; and it would have fallen head downwards out of the cell, as it hatched, if it had not had the sense to hook its tail into its own egg-shell, which in turn, as we know, was already fastened to the top of the cell.  But it had jaws, and in addition, apparently, an appetite to use them.

Whether the queen loved it, her first baby, was hard to tell.  Did she, indeed, ever love anything?  She certainly did her duty by it; but what was the use of setting up to be a queen, anyway, if she could not do that?  And, moreover, you’ve got to do your duty in the wild.  There’s no profit in monkeying with Nature, as is possible with civilization, for the penalty thereof is death.