Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/267

 language gets extensive. Most anybody could understand what you read.”

Then with a sudden rush the Scout slid from the bed and, turning around, smoothed the coverlet and dipped deep in a trouser pocket and brought forth a grimy, round-cornered pair of dice. With a flourish of triumph these were laid before the Bee Master.

“I won’t get you all het up throwin’ against you to-day,” said the Scout Master. “This is the luckiest set I got. I’m goin’ to leave ’em with you so as if times come when you can have a pillow propped up, you’ll have ’em to play with. Would a nurse be too puddin’-headed to throw with you? Could you teach her just how to roll the bones right? Could you teach her?” The Scout Master stopped suddenly. “If a woman’s got sense enough to take care of sick people and give ’em their medicine right and bathe ’em and rub ’em and take away the pain, I reckon she can throw dice. So, of course, you’ll have somebody to play with you. I just kind of got the feeling that there can’t anybody do anything just exactly the way we do it.”

The Scout Master looked at the Bee Master and the Bee Master looked at the Scout Master and each smiled a smile so rarely beautiful that his whole face was trans-figured.

“Well, as a secret, between us, and not letting that tall, lean Scotsman there hear what we are saying, of course, such old friends as we are, people that have been so many years with each other, we do have ways that nobody else