Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/311

 mine. For yourself, you are free to do whatever you and your parents think best. For me, it seems to be a gift that I cannot accept.”

“How come?”

The little Scout shot the phrase at Jamie forcefully.

“Why, I haven’t done anything to earn it,” said Jamie. “All I’ve done here is not a drop in the bucket compared with the value of an acre of land down that slope, planted as it is, peopled with the bees. It’s simply stepping into a home and a comfortable living and a profession that I feel sure I have brains enough to master with a few years of loving and painstaking work, and there are all the books I need and all the material I need, and the name of a man who will help me. It’s too easy! It’s a fairy tale! It’s a dream! Things don’t happen that way in real life.”

The little person thought that over.

“Look here,” said a confident voice, and a small hand was laid on Jamie’s cheek and his face was turned straightly to meet the gaze of the speaker. “Look here! Maybe you think the bandages you’re wearing don’t show through the shirt on your back; but when you stoop over, they do. You’re pretty game about it and you don’t bellyache, but, of course, you wouldn’t be all harnessed up like that if you didn’t have to be. And that means that wrong things and things that hurt you and hit you awful hard came your way, and it was for all of us, for ‘Our country ’tis of thee.’ But you bucked up and you stood your hurts, and you didn’t complain, and you pulled through ’em. And you just know, all by yourself, that ugly