Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/389

 are getting much of a chance at the little new Jamie. Our little Scout has taken possession of him and is on the job. I think you will need help with the bees seriously before you get it for the coming few days. There seems to be a feeling of responsibility that none of us understand.

I think perhaps it’s all of a piece with the pride of possession, with the ownership of an acre of ground and a line of beehives and a fine showing of orchard and garden. I notice that the little Scout says proudly: “Our baby!’”

When he had gone back to his bedroom, Jamie was still thinking.

“Well, anyway,” he said, “our baby’ isn’t a shame baby. He has a perfectly good name standing for him on the records, and he’s going to have a perfectly good chance, and as for the Storm Girl, she can go hang! I’m through with her!”

Then Jamie turned out the lights and lay down on his pillow and decided that he would go to sleep very speedily. Out of the darkness a voice said to him in the vernacular of the little Scout: “What’s eatin’ you? Did you want her to be dead? Did you want her to go to the horrors that are facing the beautiful body of Alice Louise?”

Jamie turned over and buried his face in the pillow and cried: “Oh, my God, no! I didn’t think of that! I don’t want her heart broken! I don’t want her dead! What I want is to know who she is, where she is, to have her depend on me, to be able to do something for her, to be released from my promise not to seek her. No! No! For her I want life, I want happiness!”