“Where are you?” she asked, “and are you really talking?”
“I seem to be,” answered the mosquito, “though you tried to finish me just now. I bear no ill-will, though. I am quite used to being an outlaw. What is more, I don’t intend to be any better. I shall go on biting people as much as I please. I must have my meals as well as the rest of the world. People seem to forget that fact.”
“It isn’t just biting,” put in the mosquito. “It really isn’t biting at all. I have a sharp little instrument to pierce the skin of the fellow I choose for my dinner, and the best kind of sucking pump to pump up his blood. That’s the way I get my meals. It is different with my mate. He is a harmless sort of fellow. He can’t even sing, and he likes such baby food as the nectar of flowers. Now tell me why I am different from other insect musicians.”
She fixed her big eyes on Ruth, who moved uneasily, and answered with not a little hesitation:
“I’m a female. That’s why. In all the orders, so far as I know, the singers are males. Naturally I am proud of being an exception. Well, you didn’t know that. Do you know why I don’t care for science?”
“It is just like an examination,” thought Ruth, and again she answered.
“Of course you don’t,” said Mrs. Mosquito. “Is there anything you _do_ know? Well, I suppose I must tell you. I don’t care for science, because it interferes too much. Once upon a time men were our friends. We not only had nice juicy meals from them, but we had their rain barrels as nurseries for our children. Of course, what they said about us, when we came too near them, was not always complimentary, but a mosquito, attending strictly to business, doesn’t mind a little thing like that. But now come these fellows who know so much, or think they know so much. We carry malaria, they say, whatever that is, and the rain barrel must go, because it helps to breed mosquitoes. Not only that, these interfering fellows seem to spend their time thinking up ways to finish us. Well, I sting them every chance I get.”
“But alas! the rain barrel is going. I was hatched in one of the few to be found in these sad days. I was a lively baby, I can tell you. Young mosquitoes are called wrigglers and, true to my name, I wriggled for all I was worth. Now, when you know that my mother had laid something like three hundred eggs, and all had hatched into wrigglers as lively as myself, you can imagine the time there was in that old rain barrel.”