Bees! Bees! Hark to the Bees!
‘Hide from your neighbours as much as you please,
But all that has happened to _us_ you must tell!
Or else we will give you no honey to sell.’
_A maiden in her glory,_
_Upon her wedding-day,_
_Must tell her Bees the story,_
_Or else they’ll fly away._
_Fly away—die away—_
_Dwindle down and leave you!_
_But if you don’t deceive your Bees,_
_Your Bees will not deceive you!—_
_Marriage, birth or buryin’,_
_News across the seas,_
_All you’re sad or merry in,_
_You must tell the Bees._
_Tell ’em coming in an’ out,_
_Where the Fanners fan,_
_’Cause the Bees are justabout_
_As curious as a man!_
_Don’t you wait where trees are,_
_When the lightnings play;_
_Nor don’t you hate where Bees are,_
_Or else they’ll pine away._
_Pine away—dwine away—_
_Anything to leave you!_
_But if you never grieve your Bees,_
_Your Bees’ll never grieve you._
‘DYMCHURCH FLIT’
Just at dusk, a soft September rain began to fall on the hop-pickers. The
mothers wheeled the bouncing perambulators out of the gardens; bins were
put away, and tally-books made up. The young couples strolled home, two to
each umbrella, and the single men walked behind them laughing. Dan and
Una, who had been picking after their lessons, marched off to roast
potatoes at the oast-house, where old Hobden, with Blue-eyed Bess, his
lurcher-dog, lived all the month through, drying the hops.
They settled themselves, as usual, on the sack-strewn cot in front of the
fires, and, when Hobden drew up the shutter, stared, as usual, at the
flameless bed of coals spouting its heat up the dark well of the
old-fashioned roundel. Slowly he cracked off a few fresh pieces of coal,
packed them, with fingers that never flinched, exactly where they would do
most good; slowly he reached behind him till Dan tilted the potatoes into
his iron scoop of a hand; carefully he arranged them round the fire, and
then stood for a moment, black against the glare. As he closed the
shutter, the oast-house seemed dark before the day’s end, and he lit the
candle in the lanthorn. The children liked all these things because they
knew them so well.
The Bee Boy, Hobden’s son, who is not quite right in his head, though he
can do anything with bees, slipped in like a shadow. They only guessed it
when Bess’s stump-tail wagged against them.