SHERWOOD 



THE FOUNDER OF A CITY 



259 



proud of her as the tiny creature ran gleefully about on her six 

 new legs. 



In a short time more than half of the babies had wakened and 

 were growing strong and hard and darker brown as they ran up 

 and down the cell, stroked each other with their antennae, and let 

 their Queen mother wash them. They were all dwarfs and workers 

 with quick, eager little feet and slim bodies. It was time for them 

 to begin their long lives of work and hunger. Their instinct taught 

 them to make a passage-way from the cell to the open air, and some 

 went off in the sunshine in search of food while others guarded and 

 tended their worn out mother. 



When one came in with excited sounds and gestures five of her 

 sisters hurried with her to the end of the opening, and there was 

 the huge, sleeping pupa of some beetle. They dragged it eagerly 

 into the cell, and, cutting through its hard skin, went running to 

 their starving mother with juicy morsels and crops full of insect 

 blood which they fed to her. No feast she had ever eaten could 

 have tasted half as good as this first one which her children brought 

 to her after more than half a year of toil and fasting ! 



The stone by the rose bush was not disturbed by the gardener or 

 the snow storms and rain. If you had chanced to sit near it ten 

 years after the Queen hid beneath it you might have noticed groups 

 of busy brown ants passing back and forth from under it. A great 

 city had grown up there, with the old Queen for its ruler. She had 

 never gone out into the garden again, but had been cared for and 

 fed and protected loyally by thousands of her children, as she laid 

 eggs year after year. Her first, drawf children had died, but she 

 was still strong. Even.- August at that curious hour when some 

 ant bell must have rung in the garden and all her royal children 

 flew away, perhaps her old body was quickened by a swift, sudden 

 memory of a flight in the sunlight with her sparkling King! 



