and fly ghouls--and other loathsome
horrors, the scavengers, hyenas, vultures, and jackals of the wasp
world.

Now, after making the first cell, or, rather, the part cell, with its
low parapet, the queen laid an egg--it was very minute, that
egg--inside the cell, gumming it against the top, on the angle nearest
the center of the city. It had to be cemented there; otherwise it
would have fallen out.

In the next cell she laid an egg, too, cementing it up to the top in
the same manner--always in the angle nearest the center of the
city--and in the next another egg, and so on, up to the twenty-four or
so. It is a little doubtful precisely how long she took over the
process, because, for one thing, she made so many journeys backwards
and forwards to get wood-pulp from the rails for paper manufacture--she
used paper for everything; and, for another thing, she began to roof
over the whole affair with a hanging umbrella made of layers of the
finest paper that you ever did see--much finer than that made by the
ordinary common or garden worker-wasp of the jam-pots and the
stewed-fruit dish, for was she not a queen, and therefore not common in
anything she did?--and it became, in consequence, rather hard to see
what she really was "at." Most of the time that the sky remained
cloudy she used up at this job, and also when there was a shower of
rain, for she hated rain and all shadow and darkness.

Her purpose, in regard to this paper roofing, was to keep out any
possible dripping that might come through the earth roof in wet
weather, and to store up and multiply the heat from her body. Terrific
heat, to be sure; nevertheless important in the scheme of things. When
all was completed, this city, this mighty kingdom, measured about one
and a half inches round.

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 wick