Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/272

 “The Nice Child is all right, but Fat Ole Bill and Angel Face are eatin’ too much raw meat. If they mutiny one at a time, I can handle ’em. If the day comes very often when two or three of them go bad in a heap—” the Scout Master straightened up and lifted a face contorted by a wry grimace—“woe is me!”

Jamie and the Bee Master could not keep from laughing, much as they respected the mentality of their small partner.

“Now, as I was telling you,” continued the little person, “you can look how beautiful they are and, too, you can braid ’em. Just by getting a nurse to give you a pin and starting with two and then workin’ up and down and across like this, you can make a coverlet big enough for your shoulders to keep the cold air out, and you can make them run in waves, an you can make ’em go in loops. I don’t know anything you can play at easier or get more combinations out of when you are sick and have to lie in bed than just a bunch of beautiful ribbons. It keeps your mind on what you are doing, but it isn’t like solitaire or some of the things you can play alone that still make you think hard enough to send you to the mat if you wasn’t already there. Now, I guess we’d better go. The Bee Master will be tired. Mother said I wasn’t to stay long enough to make a sick man tired, and I wasn’t to talk enough to make him worse, and what else did she say? Oh, I know. I wasn’t to look like I wanted anything to eat, ’cause there wasn’t anything to eat at a hospital.”

The Scout Master, with a lingering stroke, pushed back