nlit picture, to be photographed
upon her memory, and there remain forevermore.

It took her some time, for it was some job; but once done, it was done
for good.

Next, alighting with great hustle--now that the work was once
begun--the queen ran into her tunnel, and made sure that nobody had
"jumped her claim" in the interval. She found an ant, red and
ravenous, taking too professional an interest in the place, and she
abolished that ant with one nip; though, as you may be sure, the tiny
insect fought like a bulldog.

Then she executed a shallow excavation upon the site of the future city
itself, carrying each pellet of earth outside beyond the entrance.
This also took time, though she worked at fever-pitch, almost with
fury; but she managed to finish it, and fly away into the landscape in
a remarkably short while, considering.

Here once again she appeared to be searching for something through the
yellow sunshine and the falling blossom-petals--confetti from Spring's
wedding. And presently she found it, or seemed to--an old gate, off
its hinges. But the wood was rotting, and she was no fool. She knew
her job--the job she had never done before, by the way--and after
humming around it in a fretful, undecided sort of fashion for some
while, she flew on. Apparently she was looking for wood, but not _any_
wood. Cut wood appeared to be her desire, and that oak; at least, she
put behind her a deal board lying half-overgrown, after one careful
professional inspection.

Her way was through a perilous world, beset by a thousand foes, mostly
in the nature of traps and lines and barbed-wire entanglements set by
spiders. As a rule you didn't see these last at all--nor did she; but
her yellow-and-black badge usually won her a way of respect--and
hate--and she cut or struggled herself clear of such web-lines as her
feelers failed to spot in time.

At last she found some real oak rails, and set to work upon them at
once, planing with her sharp shear-jaws. A tiger-beetle, gaudy and
hungry-eyed, sought to pounce upon her in this task. He was
long-legged, and keen, and lean, and very swift; but she shot aloft
just in time; and when she came down again, with a z-zzzzp, as quickly
as she went up, sting first, he had wisely dodged into a cranny, where
he defied her with open and jagged jaws.

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