the affair was as important as the Day of Judgment.

"And then?" asked horrified Sacharissa.

"Then, I have heard that a little light will burn in a great
darkness, and perhaps the world will begin again. Myself, I think
not."

"Tut! Tut!" the Wax-moth cried. "You good, fat people always
prophesy ruin if things don't go exactly your way. But I grant
you there will be changes."

There were. When her eggs hatched, the wax was riddled with
little tunnels, coated with the dirty clothes of the
caterpillars. Flannelly lines ran through the honey-stores, the
pollen-larders, the foundations, and, worst of all, through the
babies in their cradles, till the Sweeper Guards spent half their
time tossing out useless little corpses. The lines ended in a
maze of sticky webbing on the face of the comb. The caterpillars
could not stop spinning as they walked, and as they walked
everywhere, they smarmed and garmed everything. Even where it did
not hamper the bees' feet, the stale, sour smell of the stuff put
them off their work; though some of the bees who had taken to egg
laying said it encouraged them to be mothers and maintain a vital
interest in life.

When the caterpillars became moths, they made friends with the
ever-increasing Oddities--albinoes, mixed-leggers, single-eyed
composites, faceless drones, halfqueens and laying sisters; and
the ever-dwindling band of the old stock worked themselves bald