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The Keeper of the Bees

can quite understand. We do satisfy each other a little bit better than any one else could. I have a very nice nurse. She will play with me, and I can't tell you how fine I think it is of you to leave your best set with me. I’ll take great care of them, and if it just happens that the nurse is so puddin’-headed that she can’t roll the bones right, I’ll ask Jamie to bring them back to you some of these days.”

The Scout Master nodded. Then from a hip pocket was brought out a small roll done in tissue paper. This was spread on the bed and opened up, and before the amazed eyes of Jamie and the Bee Master there billowed over the bed yards and yards of gaudy silk and satin flowered, plaided, and striped ribbons. The Scout Master ran appreciative fingers through the gaudy mass and shook it out.

“You wouldn’t guess in a frog’s croak how I got these. A few years ago, before all the girls took to painting their mouths and their faces like the Indians, and all of them got the shingles, they was addicted to ribbons. Ribbons just raged. You couldn’t get ’em bright enough and you couldn’t get ’em broad enough, and you couldn’t get ’em stiff enough. Nannette used to look like the ribbon counter at Wanamaker’s or Marshall Field’s or Robinson’s when she’d come down to breakfast. And then, just like that,” the Scout Master snapped a thumb and second finger with a spang to show how instantaneous “that” was, “just like that, ribbons were out, and Nannette had spent all her pin money on ribbons until she had a lean