retreated too late, however, for the man had seen him and proceeded to call after him in what seemed a very peremptory tone: "Stop!" For a moment, Oliver hesitated, uncertain whether to obey or to take to his heels and seek safety in the wood below. Could the man have read his secret, or was the apple in his hand the cause of the summons? Before he could really [20]decide, the girl's voice was raised also—pleading and urgent. [20] "We need you," she called. "You must help us. Oh, don't go away!" He turned slowly and went toward them through the tall grass, uncertain, suspicious, afraid even yet that he might fall into some trap that would delay his flight. His uneasiness was not in any way quieted by his seeing that one of the white boxes stood, uncovered, before the two and that it was a beehive. "You have come just in time," said the man, "if you are willing to help us. It is a difficult business, hiving a swarm of bees at this season, and Polly, here, is no use at all. This is her first day with the bees this year, and she jumps up and down when they sing around her head, and that stops everything." "I do better usually," the girl confessed humbly, "but I forget, over the winter, how to be quiet and calm when a million bees are buzzing in my ear." She thrust into Oliver's hand the leather and metal bellows that blows wood smoke into the hive, and her father began giving him directions as unconcernedly as though his helping were a matter of course. "Just stand beside me, stay very still, and keep blowing smoke; that is right. Don't move and never mind how close the bees come. There is no danger of your being stung." The square white box was full of wooden frames, [21]hanging one behind another, like the leaves of a book. One by one the man lifted them out, swept off the black curtain of bees that clung to them, and showed the clean, new, sweet-smelling honeycomb. [21] "When an old hive gets too crowded, and the bees begin to swarm," he explained, "we divide them and put some frames and bees into a new, empty hive. See them going to work already, and look at that piece of comb that has just been built; one would think that the fairies had made it." Oliver had never seen anything so white and
Prev.
Back
Top