Tom, who was a famous woodchopper in winter, went off toward the tree, followed by lazy little Peter, who loved to see others work. Soon the chips were flying right and left. Suddenly there was a yell from Peter. Tom dropped his axe. Ben Gile hurried over to the boy, and the others crowded around. Tom was sure a splinter had gone into Peter's eye. The lad was holding on to his eye, and jumping up and down with pain. But as Ben Gile was trying to make the boy take his hand away, Tom exclaimed, grabbed one hand with the other, and made for the pond. "It's hornets, Ben!" he called; and before the others could say anything he had clapped some mud on his own hand and brought mud for Peter's eye, which he poulticed with this useful material, and tied around it a big white handkerchief. Although Peter did not in the least like the bite, yet he felt rather proud of the bandage, and for the first time in his life he, too, wanted to know about the creatures who could give so much pain. "Tell us, sir," the children cried, "about the wasps while dinner is cooking." So Ben Gile, who had left the cooking to the other guides, gathered the children and Mrs. Reece about him, and began: "One day last fall I saw, high up in a tree near the pond, the pretty, gray nest of Mrs. Vespa-Wasp. It did not look like a real house, with windows in it and steps leading up to it. But there it hung, swinging in the bare branches, its walls of pretty, soft gray blending so beautifully with the pale-blue sky. "I wondered whether any of the wasp family was at home, but the house was too high for me to reach, so I went away to find a long pole with which to knock. With my long pole I knocked gently at first, then louder and louder, but no one stirred within. So I poked harder, trying to break off a strong branch which ran straight through the top of the house. At last it broke off, and down came the gray house almost into my arms. "It was big and round, like a Japanese lantern. Guess of what it was made? Just paper. But not our kind of paper; it was wasp-paper. Mrs. Vespa and her family make this paper out of wood-pulp, which they get by scraping off the weathered wood from trees and fences. Of course this old wood is of various colors, but that makes the house so much the prettier. One wasp comes back with its burden of woody pulp rolled up in a little pellet. This it takes and spreads in thin ribbons along the edge of the wall which is being made. Perhaps this edge is dark gray. Then off it flies for more material, while another takes its place with a pellet of light gray, which is soon skilfully moulded on to the edge. Sometimes the outer wall consists of several layers of this wasp-paper, which is strong and waterproof. Within the wall are many stories of cone, built like different floors in our own houses.