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 
