BEE-KEEPING AND THE SIMPLE LIFE 269 
old song sung in an intermittent, absent-minded 
way. 
In one of the pauses of this song, I raised the 
latch of the gate. Its sharp click drew to its full: 
lean height a figure at the end of the garden, 
which was bending down in the midst of a wilder- 
ness of hives. As the man came towards me 
coatless, his rolled-up shirt-sleeves baring wiry 
brown arms to the hot June sun, I took in all the 
busy, quiet picture. The red-tiled, winding path, 
the sea of old-fashioned garden-flowers on every 
hand, billows of lilac and red-may and laburnum, 
shadowy blue deeps of forget-me-not, scarlet tulips 
amidst them like lighthouses, and drifting shallows 
of amber mignonette. A decent house stood hard 
by, its windows bright and clean as diamond- 
facets. There was a gay flicker of linen on a line 
beyond. An old dog lolled in a straw-filled barrel. 
A cat kept company with a milk-jug on the spot- 
less doorstep. And everywhere there were bee- 
hives, each of a different harmonious shade of 
colour, not ranged in stilted rows, but scattered 
here and there in twos and threes in the orderless 
order beloved of bees and unsuburban men. 
The bee-master had keer grey eyes, set deep in 
a sun-blackened, honest face, and the ever-ready 
tongue of him was that of the beeman all the 
world over. He was ripe and willing to talk of 
his work, explaining what he was, and what he 
had done, as we slowly wandered through his 
