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The Keeper of the Bees

it, he felt for the check book he had stuffed in his pocket and all the emergency change that lay in the little box on the top left-hand shelf of the working library of the bees. His thoughts were whirling in chaos. The Storm Girl. She had come to her hour of agony, bravely, without doubt, as she would. She had asked no help from him, She had brought a child into the world, a son. “A fine baby,” the voice had said, but it did not sound as if she were all right. The report had sounded ominous to Jamie. He had not known that anæsthetics were a part of the birth of a child. A great many things had happened in the past six years that Jamie did not know about. He had not known anything worth while in the beginning as to how human beings entered the world, but he had been told, he had deciphered for himself, the fact that it was not an easy journey either for the mother or the child, and at this hospital that he was going to there was a little living boy, and the ceremony Jamie had gone through had been for the purpose of covering the child with an honourable name. That “fine little fellow” he had been told about was James Lewis MacFarlane, Junior, and the fine girl, the Storm Girl, the girl of the deep eyes and the broad chest, the girl of the cold wet face and the clutching hands, the girl of the quivering lips and the staring eyes—what was it? She had not rallied from the anæsthetic? She was not regaining consciousness as she should, and among her effects they had found his address, and he was on his way to her. A minute more and he would be in the room where she was. He would see her forehead, and