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The Keeper of the Bees

clear and silvery broke on Jamie’s ears. “Ain’t that the bunk? You ought to hear the Bee Master laugh when he reads Pliny on bees! And there are a lot more of them that are just as funny, but these are not funny at all. These are mostly what you need to know to get really interested.”

The small finger ran across Lubbock and Swammerdam with the remark in passing: “He has got wonderful pictures of how bees are inside,” and paused on Huber. “You’ll want to read Huber,” the little Scout said. “He was blind, but he thought out all the experiments and made all the investigations, and a man with eyes kept the records. He’s wonderful, too. His book is named ‘New Observations on Bees.’ Pretty good for a blind man, I’ll say. You know, being a bee master is a lot of other things besides just bees.”

The explanation was offered off-hand, gratuitously.

“It’s being outdoors most of the time. It’s flowers and what flowers bees like best. It’s a case of quick eyes and a steady hand, and I’d say you’d got to be decent. You’d better be certain you’re hitting on all your cylinders before you go around bees. The Bee Master says that bees know, and if anybody’s a liar and a cheat and got the odours of sin and selfishness hangin’ around ’em—tell it to Papa! The bees know it like a shot, if you’re mean; and they haven’t got a bit of mercy. The minute they get a whiff of what you are, they punks her your tire. If you know, away down deep inside you, that you ain’t right, and that God wouldn’t let you into Heaven if you