ed 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.

Wherefore did our queen, after making quite sure that the sack-like
atom with a mouth, hanging upside-down in the cell, and wriggling like
anything to show it