Page:Maud Howe - Atlanta in the South.djvu/81

 Ask this same hard-working honey-bee if he would n't like to be a drone if he could. I warrant he would jump, or fly, or buzz, or do whatever a bee does to express pleasure at the chance to change places with the favored attendant of the queen-bee.

One evening, when Canal Street was even more crowded with loafers than is its wont, two persons, who seemed to have some definite object in being abroad, took their way down this wide thoroughfare, the main artery through which the city's life-blood pulsates. Philip Rondelet and his companion, Margaret Ruysdale, would gladly have joined the throng of wayfarers loitering through the street; but as neither ventured to make the suggestion, they followed the programme they had marked out for the evening. Leaving the gay highway, they turned into a narrow alley which led through one of the poorest quarters of the town. There were no street-lamps here, only an occasional lantern swinging before the door of some dealer in liquors or small wares. At the corner of a cross street they paused for a moment, attracted by the interior of a small shop where a bright light was flaring. Heaps of vegetables and fruit were piled against the walls, and from the darkened rafters hung bunches of herbs and red peppers. A fire burned on the hearth, over which a pot