her sleeves tied right. If she still carried them when she got to Heaven, all around her would be smelly with flowers. None of us wanted her to go. We all liked to take care of her. We all liked to take her fruits and flowers and books and papers. Every one of us saved every funny story we found to tell her, but at that we were all kind of glad when she went, ’cause her bones must have hurt her, and she couldn’t have told true when she always said she was better, because she had to give up and have the doctor sometimes, bad as she hated it.”
The little Scout stood up with outflung hands in a gesture of finality.
“After I’ve told you that, you can see how the Bee Master might look if God decided that he should go to sleep in the night, and there wouldn’t be any more pain in his side or any more sweat drippin’ off his nose. I bet all the harps and all the trumpets in Heaven would go ‘Zoom! Zoom!’ and all the angels would come flocking if the Bee Master went through the gates! I bet God Himself would stand up when the Bee Master came up so straight and tall to salute Him, because sometimes, some where he’d been in a war. He’s got a bully uniform and he can pull off the snappiest salutes! He’s been a soldier and I bet you’ve been a soldier, too, ’cause you look like a soldier and you move like a soldier, and I think it’s punk that you ain’t got your uniform on. I just love uniforms!”
And then Jamie’s mouth fell open and his eyes widened. A cautioning hand was thrust backward toward him. A
