BEE-KEEPING AND THE SIMPLE LIFE 275 



carried for sale. The bee-master put an admiring 

 hand upon it. 



" It was all Hetty's idea," he said. " London 

 girls for pluck, you know ! And she goes into the 

 town with it once a fortnight in the season ; takes 

 it away crammed full, mind, and never brings back 

 an ounce ! Somehow or other, I think those girls 

 ought to change names !" 



Journeying back to the railroad-station under 

 the eternal English sunshine and through the chain 

 of blossoming fields, I listened to the chant of the 

 bees around me; and though it was the familiar 

 sound of a lifetime, there was something in it then 

 which I had never heard before. The rich note 

 rose and fell ; died down to silence as the path led 

 through impregnable red-clover ; swelled again as 

 the land paled to the rosy hue of the sainfoin ; burst 

 out into a loud, glad symphony where a patch of 

 charlock blent its despised, uncoveted gold with 

 the farmer's drill. " You thought you knew our 

 ways of life from Alpha to Omega " — so seemed 

 to run, in fancy, the wavering refrain. " You have 

 pried upon us day and night, in season and out of 

 season. You have chloroformed us, vivisected us, 

 torn our dead sisters limb from limb to feed the 

 cruel, glittering eyes of that binocular of yours. 

 You have come at last to think that there was 

 nothing about us, within or without or round about, 

 that you had not got to know. And here a common 

 18 — 2 



