270 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE 



domain. He was a Londoner — he told me — at 

 least, that was his fate half a dozen years ago — a 

 City clerk, pale as the ledger-leaves that fluttered 

 through his fingers from nine to six of the working 

 day. And at home, in a dreary desert of house- 

 tops called Nunhead — whither may an unkind fate 

 never lure me — his sisters sewed for a living, 

 white-faced as himself. But one day, in an old 

 second-hand book-shop, he lit upon a threepenny 

 treasure — a book on the management of bees. 

 He read it as his train crawled homeward on one 

 stifling, freezing, fog-bound winter's night ; and 

 there and then, in the mean, dirty cattle-box of a 

 third-class carriage, in fancy the bee-garden was 

 inaugurated, that has since developed into all I 

 saw around me on that brave morning in June. 



It was a long time in the doing, he told me, as 

 we sauntered among the busy hives, speaking with 

 a delightful Sussex intonation already veneered 

 upon his Cockney brogue — a long and weary and 

 scraping time. There was money to be saved, 

 the capital needed for the enterprise ; and this was 

 no easy matter out of a total family income of 

 forty shillings a week. But at last it was done, 

 and well done. There came a day when the three 

 of them shook the dust of Nunhead from their 

 feet, and took over possession of the little tumble- 

 down cottage with its bare half-acre of neglected 

 ground. Well, those were hard times to begin 

 with — he said, with an unaccountable relish in the 



