Presently the grub, not having received quite a big
enough dose of its captor's anaesthetic, came to under the devouring
jaws and began to lash out convulsively. Another touch of the medicine
in the hornet's tail, however, promptly put a stop to that, and once
more it tightened up into an unresisting ball. Then straddling it
again firmly, and handling it cleverly with its front legs as a raccoon
might handle a big apple, she bit into it here and there, sucking
eagerly with a quick, pumping motion of her body. The fat ball got
smaller and smaller, till soon it was very little bigger than an
ordinary sweet pea. The hornet turned it over and over impatiently, to
see if anything more was to be got out of it; then she spurned it
aside, and bounced into the air with a deep hum. She had certainly
been very amusing, but the Child drew a breath of relief when she was
gone. He had caught the copper-red flicker of her sting, as it barely
touched the victim, and it seemed to him like a jet of live flame.
When the hornet was gone the Child began once more to remember that
little stick in the soft moss beneath him. How had he ever forgotten
it? He decided that he must have been sitting on it for hours and
hours.
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