CHAPTER XXV 
THE UNBUSY BEE 
if is well-nigh two months now since the hives 
were packed down for the winter, and the 
bees are flying as thick as on many a summer’s 
day. 
Yet no one could mistake their flight for the 
summer flight. It is not the straight-away eager 
rush up into the blue vault of the sunny morning— 
high away over hedgerow and village roof-top 
towards the clover-fields, whitening the far-off 
hillside with their tens of thousands of honey- 
brimming bells. It is rather the vagrant, purpose- 
less hanging-about of an habitually busy people 
forced to make holiday. Through it all there runs 
the pathetic interest in trifles, half-hearted and 
wholly artificial, that you see among the lolling 
crowd of men when a great strike is on—the 
thoughtful kicking at odd pebbles; stride-measuring 
on the flag-stones; little vortices of excitement got 
up over minute incidents that would otherwise pass 
unnoticed; the earnest flagellation of memory over 
past happenings more trivial still. 
Thus the bees idle pea and wander, on this 
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