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 my salt water back. The Master said it was rotten, and he held me tight and rubbed off the stingers, ’cause that’s the way you must; if you pull ’em it makes them worse. And then he turned the hose on a clayey place and mixed a cool poultice of mud and spread on the stings, and he said he ought to be booted for lettin’ me go ’mong the bees when I was all smelly of dogs and horses.

“So I wiped up my eyes and I said I reckoned that was the trouble. What I ought to a-done was to put on his old bee coat and rubbed some lilies on my head and some cinnamon pinks on my britches. So I went to the back porch and got his coat and when I commenced putting it on, he asked me what I was going to do. And I told him I was going to get my scent right and ‘try, try again. He just sat there looking at me, and I never saw his eyes get so big and black and I never saw his face get whiter when the pain was hurting him the worst, and away back under his breath, so I could barely hear, he whispered, ‘Before God, you wouldn’t do it, little Scout?’

“And I said, ‘God ain’t got nothin’ to do with this. It’s between you and me, and I’m going!’

“And so I buttoned up the coat and I went down to the cinnamon pink bed and I just about rolled in it. I don’t know but I treated the pinks rougher than the Master liked, but you’ll understand if you ever get stung by a Black German why I was anxious to get plenty of cinnamon on. And then I smashed the sweetest lily I could find and I rubbed it in all over my hair. And then I started down the east walk. I thought I’d try the Italian