ore for her.

Afar off in the sunshine something glimmered red. A lurking
impatience seized the little bee. Moreover, she felt hungry. So,
courageously, with a loud joyous buzz, she swung out of her
hiding-place into the clear, glistening air and the warm
sunlight, and made straight for the red patch that seemed to nod
and beckon. When she drew near she smelled a perfume so sweet
that it almost robbed her of her senses, and she was hardly able
to reach the large red flower. She let herself down on the
outermost of its curved petals and clung to it tightly. At the
gentle tipping of the petal a shining silver sphere almost as
big as herself, came rolling toward her, transparent and
gleaming in all the colors of the rainbow. Maya was dreadfully
frightened, yet fascinated too by the splendor of the cool
silver sphere, which rolled by her, balanced on the edge of the
petal, leapt into the sunshine, and fell down in the grass. Oh,
oh! The beautiful ball had shivered into a score of wee pearls.
Maya uttered a little cry of terror. But the tiny round
fragments made such a bright, lively glitter in the grass, and
ran down the blades in such twinkling, sparkling little drops
like diamonds in the lamplight, that she was reassured.

She turned towards the inside of the calix. A beetle, a little
smaller than herself, with brown wing-sheaths and a black
breastplate, was sitting at the entrance. He kept his place
unperturbed, and looked at her seriously, though by no means
unamiably. Maya bowed politely.

"Did the ball belong to you?" she asked, and receiving no reply
added: "I am very sorry I threw it down."

"Do you mean the dewdrop?" smiled the beetle, rather superior.
"You needn't worry about that. I had taken a drink already and
my wife never drinks water, she has kidney trouble.-- What are
you doing here?"

"What is this wonderful flower?" asked Maya, not answering the
beetle's question. "Would you be good enough to tell me its
name?"

Remembering Cassandra's advice she was as polite as possible.

The beetle moved his shiny head in his dorsal plate, a thing he
could do easily without the least discomfort, as his head fitted
in perfectly and glided back and forth without a click.

"You seem to be only of yesterday?" he said, and laughed--not
so very politely. Altogether there was something about him that
struck Maya as unrefined. The bees had more culture and better
manners. Yet he seemed to be a good-natured fellow,