The gardener was working near, and he said, “Master Jack, did you ever see a wasp’s nest?”

Jack shook his head.

“Well, now, if you come into my cottage, I’ll show you one this evening.  It’s not a very good one, for it got broken digging it out of the ground in one of the garden paths.  We’d been terribly plagued with wasps for weeks, and it was some time before we could find the nest.  We watched them go into a hole in the ground; so one evening when they’d all gone to bed we got some pitch and brimstone, and laid them with some lighted sticks on the top of the hole.  The wasps woke up, and came out to see what was going on; but they were smothered by the brimstone smoke, and were soon done for.  The next day we dug out the nest.

“Wasps are great pests, Master Jack, I can tell you.  They are very fond of honey, and they go into the bee-hives to steal it, especially when the mornings and evenings get cool, and the bees are not watching at the holes of their hives, because they’ve gone inside to keep themselves warm.

“The wasps spoil a lot of fruit.  If there’s one peach finer than another, they know it; and as for the plums, green-gages in particular, why, they are as mad after them as the birds are for the cherries.  What with the caterpillars and slugs being after the vegetables, and the birds and the wasps making such havoc with the fruit, I wonder sometimes how we ever get any for ourselves.”

“There always seems plenty of fruit and vegetables, though,” said Jack.

“Well, yes,” said the gardener, “maybe.  The birds do help us with caterpillars and slugs, I’m bound to own; and then we are always on the look-out to destroy wasps:  and as to the birds, I dodge them with netting; and sometimes we take the nests out of the fruit-trees, as much as to tell them to go elsewhere.”

That evening Jack went into the gardener’s cottage and saw the wasp’s nest.  It looked like the cells of bees made in whity-brown paper.

“What is it made of?” asked Jack; “it isn’t wax.”

“Well, I’ve heard that the wasp, which has very strong jaws, bites bits of wood off posts and rails, and moistens them by chewing them into a kind of paper, and then makes a comb of it like what you see here.”

“I wish I had seen this wasp’s nest taken.”

“No, Master Jack; why, you’d be in bed at that time:  besides, I don’t suppose your grandmamma would have let you go, even if you had been here, for you might have been stung.  It’s rather a touchy job, is taking a wasp’s nest,—­very different from hiving bees; we give them a home, but we take one from the wasps.

“If the queen bee falls into the new hive, the bees are right enough—­they are sure to go where she is; but the wasps are naturally angered and frightened at being suffocated out of their home.  So, I say, keep clear of wasps’ nests; those jobs are best done on the quiet.”

“Was anybody stung when this nest was taken?”