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 Halfway there the little Scout paused and looked at Jamie speculatively.

“Am I to call you the Bee Master now?”

“No,” said Jamie. “You aren’t going to call me the Bee Master, maybe not for long years yet. The Bee Master is a title that has to be won by painstaking work and fine thought and delicate operations. It’s a title that properly belonged to the man who’s sleeping now. He could wear it with grace and dignity. It’s too big to fit my case. We’ll have to find a title for me that means stumbling along plainly and simply, every day studying my job and making the most of it, going at things with all my heart and putting the best I have to give to them, just sticking on the job because I like it, as you told me I would.”

Registering among the mental pictures that endured, there registered on Jamie’s consciousness the upward lift of the shoulders, the backward slant of the head, the elevation of the chin, the outward gesture of both hands, and on his ears fell the dictum: “Oh, well, then, if you want to be plain and simple, if you want to get right down to brass tacks, you better just answer to what you are—the Keeper of the Bees. That’s a good enough name for any man.”

“I heartily agree with you,” said Jamie. “That’s a fine title. That satisfies me fully and completely, better, in fact, than any title possibly could that was of German origin.”

“Is the ‘Bee Master’ of German origin?” queried the little Scout.