.In.v, i<;i<) 



O L K A N r N G S I N B E E C TT L T U K K 



ANNE LESTER AND DADDY LOWE, BEEKEEPERS 



By Grace Allen — Chapter VI 



^^|->^1']AR Roheit: N.atioiis iii:iy rise or 

 I J fall, but the world shall have honey. 

 Daddy Lowe and I have seen to that 

 — we and the bees. We have extracted. 

 And wouldn 't you, over there making the 

 world safe for democracy and honey-eating, 

 like to hear all about it? I thought so, it 

 will make such a cheery contrast to mud 

 and cooties. Do, by the way, tell me if the 

 writers have been justified in putting so 

 much emphasis on these two features of the 

 war; they have gradually come to be the 

 whole background of my mental pictures. 

 Always, in my n'ind 's eye, you are in the 

 mud, tho you haven 't made much reference 

 to it yourself. But tho I picture an entire 

 army fighting cooties, I admit that you, my 

 dignified brother, remain an ever dignified 

 exception. Perhaps you better not, even 

 tho accuracy might require it, disillusion 

 me — let me keep my sisterly pride. 



"Well, to get to the extracting job. First 

 of all, it really is a job. We taked about 

 it a lot as June closed and Ju'y came, and 

 at last Daddy Lowe said, 'Now.' So on 

 Tuesday of last week, the second Tuesday 

 in July, we put on the bee-escapes and oth- 

 erwise made ready. Bee-escapes, Captain 

 Brother, are clever contraptions designed 

 to let unsuspecting bees pass down, out of 

 their treasu -e vaults into the nu-sery, and 

 not let them back. The intention is to have 

 the honey that the beekeeper is going to 

 take as free from bees as possible at the 

 critical moment of taking. The next morn- 

 ing we took it off, ' we ' meaning Daddy 

 Lowe. I hovered around, of course, all eyes 

 and 'Oh's' but the only practical thing \ 

 did was to open the screen door of the honey- 

 shed when lie came rolling in the wheel-bar- 

 rows of honey. 



"After it was all in, piled on one side of 

 the room, the performance started. JMrs. 

 Lowe came down to see the start, as she has 

 always done, they say. She didn 't stay 

 long this time, but just her being there for 

 a little while seemed to sort of consecrate 

 the place. She sat in the little rocker that 

 stays there all the time, to entice her out 

 occasionally, looking around and blessing 

 things with her look. I gave her a sample 

 of the new honey, and she said it was tiie 

 best they had ever had. Mr. Lowe laughed 

 and said she had been saying that for twen- 

 ty-five years, but she insisted this really 

 was the best. I don 't know how she could 

 tell — she eats about as much lately as a dis- 

 embodied spirit. But Mr. Lowe swung 

 round, as he always does, to back her up 

 most gallantly. She was undoubtedly right, 

 he told her, this really was fine honey, and 

 anyway the last of anything was always the 

 best — good honey or happy years or almost 



anything. And she said it over after him, 

 with such a gentle smile, 'Yes, the last is 

 the best.' " 



Here Anne Lester laid down her pen and 

 looked out of the window. Her own wise 

 young instinct had told her to make her let- 

 ters only chatty and cheery, never depres- 

 sing, even before wise older people began 

 advising it. But she was frankly worried 

 these days, and Mrs. Lowe's tone and look 

 haunted her. She sat perfectly still a long 

 time, then with a little sigh started again. 



''I don't mind admitting to you that the 

 extracting of honey isn 't quite so much to 

 my taste as the yard work with the bees 

 themselves. It is much more tiring, and 

 it 's more like work in every way. The other 

 gets to be like work, too, when there is real- 

 ly a lot to do, and you must keep going, 

 hive after hive, in a business-like way. But 

 even then, it has a certain charm and fas- 

 cination that holds me steadily to it. I 

 hereby give you warning that after you 

 come home, I shall continue to keep bees. 

 Which means, of course, that I don't want 

 to go back to the city, and I don't, tho I 

 don't expect you to give up your work at 

 the bank and become a farmer for my sake, 

 like Theodore. That's the difference be- 

 tween brothers and Theodores! Anyway, I 

 couldn 't be happy if you gave up the work 

 you enjoy so 1 could have one I enjoy. But 

 1 shall want to move as far out as seems 

 reasonable for you to commute, where we 

 can have a little place with country things 

 around — great stretches of green, and climb- 

 ing roses on the fences, and cinnamon vines 

 and honeysuckle. I want some hollyhocks, 

 too, and lilacs in the dooryard blooming, 

 and things like that. Yes, and fruit trees 

 and grapevines and strawberries and mint 

 and an aspaiagus bed and things like that. 

 Then I'll have my white-painted hives on 

 green grass, under the fruit trees, with hoi 

 lyhocks and roses all around; and when you 

 come home, tired and hot and soulsick, 

 from your noisy city with its shut-in old 

 bank, I'll give you co'.d dinky tea with mint 

 in it, and quietness and beauty, and let you 

 Ijsten to the humming of my bees. And 

 alter a bit you'll feel as tho something 

 lo\ e'y had touched you, with a blessing in 

 its hand. 



' ' I seem to hffve run off my subject again. 

 I really like a subject that is easy to run off 

 from, like a road with leafy lanes and cool 

 pebbly creeks leading off. It's easy enough 

 to come back. 



' ' Here, then, is how you extract honey. 

 First you take a big comb, all sealed over, 

 cr mostly so, so as to be sure it is 'ripe,' 

 then vou rest the end with gentle emphasis 



