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300
The Keeper of the Bees

a-done it. Prodibly I wouldn’t a-had anything but what the Bee Master wanted me to have. Prodibly I would a-saved up my money and got some Madonna lilies and planted ’em on my side for myself, but I thought you’d offer to trade.”

Slowly Jamie digested this.

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “That must have been a thoughtless streak in me. My head is a lot older than yours and I knew that we couldn’t trade without going to court and having measurements and making out deeds and paying officers for making the change, and I suspect that knowledge kept me from saying that I’d trade when it really wouldn’t make any difference to me which side you had or any particular difference if you had both of them.”

“But I wouldn’t have both of them,” said the small person, promptly. “If the Bee Master had said both of them were for me, I wouldn’t have taken but half, because it wouldn’t be square, when I asked you to stay and did all I could to get you to stay. It wouldn’t be fair to take all of it.”

The little person looked at Jamie again inquiringly. “What’s goin’ to become of all the money he had in the bank?”

“Well,” said Jamie, “according to the word of the will, after his funeral expenses and his just debts are paid, whatever remains in the bank is subject to provisions in the will that your dad will explain to you when he has thoroughly studied the document. I can tell you this: