276 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE ~ 
City clerk, turned tail on his hereditary duty, has 
shown you, in one short hour, a whole sheaf of 
things about us which you—Peeping Tom that you 
are !—in a whole life’s keyhole-prying have never 
guessed. Out upon you! You deserve to have 
to do with nothing better than bumble-bees for the 
rest of your days!” 
For the more | thought of little bee-gardens, 
such as the one I had just visited, established here, 
there, and everywhere throughout the land, the 
plainer it became that this, after all, was a mission 
for the honey-bee that had quite escaped me; and 
the fonder of the idea I grew. With bee-keeping 
on a grand scale there was the difficulty that an 
apiary might become too large for the resources of 
the country about it, although it is all but certain 
that crops grown specially for bees can be made to 
pay. But a small garden could never exhaust the 
land within its necessary three-mile radius, and all 
the nectar its bees could gather would be obtained 
free. Nunhead has done it gloriously, thought I, 
tramping steadily onward through the clover. And 
why not all the other Nunheads that hem in the 
great cities? There must be plenty who love the 
dust and din, and are willing to stop there ;,so the 
little band of bee-gardeners will never be missed. 
And there was something else I thought of, too, 
as I strode along under the English sunshine which 
lasts for ever, swinging my box of superfluous, yet 
much-prized honey as I went. 
