AT THE CITY GATES 51 
ancient bee-garden, where the droning music of 
the hives seems to originate in the thicket of 
blossoming lilac, and red-may, and veronica, the 
hives themselves being the last things one noticed 
in such a tangle of bright-hued flowers. To ex- 
pect sentiment in the other quarter—a great 
cindered tract of country, with its long parallel 
rows of modern hives, all painted in various colours, 
its dwelling-house that might have been trans- 
planted bodily from a well-to-do London suburb, 
and its line of outbuildings, with their bustle of 
business, and coughing oil-engine, and reverbera- 
tion of hammer and saw—was to expect something 
evidently out-of-date and impossible. As well look 
for art in a Ghetto as to seek reverence for ancient 
bee-customs in a twentieth-century trading con- 
cern such as this, established to supply the market 
for honey just as a Manchester factory turns out 
calico and corduroy. 
Many lovers of country life, peripatetic artists 
and chance pedestrians for the most part, came to 
the village with this notion firmly impressed upon 
them, and, visiting the old bee-garden and finding 
the old beautiful things there in abundance, went 
no farther, and became no wiser. They wandered 
round the crooked, red-tiled paths of the garden 
with its ancient proprietor ; stooped under bowers 
of living gold and purple; waded through seas of 
scarlet poppy and blue forget-me-not and tawny 
mignonette ; came upon old beehives in all sorts 
4—2 
