Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/227

 in the library you can find the books like I showed you that tell what people used to think. The books that are the bunk. Then you’ll find the books like Lubbock and Swammerdam, which have the wonderful pictures, that will tell you what really happens. Then there are the books like Fabre and Maeterlinck that the Bee Master says are three things at one time. First they are the truth, and next they are poetry, and third they are the evidence of a Master Mind that plans every least little tiny thing. He says the only name for that Master Mind is God. He doesn’t see any use in trying to dodge God and side-step Him and call Him ‘the Spirit of the Hive’ and Instink and Nature and things like that. He says a great scientist, one of the best, almost went crazy trying to do that very thing. His name was Charles Darwin, and the Bee Master says C. D. would have been a heap bigger Injun if he’d been willing to put God in where He belongs. He says when God does anything with such care, and puts so much thought in it, and deals out such splendid justice’ as there is in a beehive, that a wise man will just take off his hat and lift his eyes to the sky and very politely he will say, ‘Just God.’”

Then in a lightning-like change, the little Scout kicked a high-standing pebble with fine precision against a mark several yards away, plumped down on the seat beside Jamie, and inquired casually, unconcernedly: “What do you say?”

Under the spell of the magic of the story he had heard, Jamie ran his fingers through his hair. Then he cupped