Having recaptured our bees, we securely fastened the box so that the wind could not blow it over; we gathered up our pans, milk pails, and bells and formed a homeward procession. Brush headed it, leading Graybeard, whose eyes were now both closed and bandaged with his white handkerchief, and in this way we reached the Mission building.
The ladies and the school girls were waiting on the porch for our return, and as we approached the gate a number called out, “How many of you are stung?”
“Two!” cried the boys; “teacher and Lester.”
When we were passing the girls on the porch to go to our quarters, pretty little black-eyed Rosalie, my sweetheart, came up to me and asked, “Frank, was you stung?”
“No; but the bees wouldn’t go in the box for anybody but me,” I answered proudly.
“But I wish you was stung like Lester,” she said; “his girl is telling the rest of them all about it, and they think he’s right smart because he got stung.”
Some of the big girls, overhearing this confidence, put their aprons up to their faces to hide their laughter. The teachers never knew that there were lovers among the pupils and that little romances were going on right under their eyes.
Graybeard could not see us to bed that night, so the superintendent took his place.
“Good night, boys, keep quiet and go to sleep,” he said as he went downstairs after he had heard us say our prayer.
“Warren, you’ve earned ten cents today,” said Brush; “I think Lester earned something too. I don’t know how much it’s going to be, but I’ll go and see the superintendent about it tomorrow.”
“Say, Brush, I think that bee that stung Lester was a drone; that’s why his face is all swelled up,” I said.
“Oh! go ’long!” he answered. “Whoever heard of a drone having a sting. They have no sting, and they can’t sting. It’s only the working bees that have a sting.”
“But those drones are big fellows, two times as big as the working bees. The superintendent showed me one when he was moving a swarm to a new box in the bee house.”
“They haven’t any sting, though. There are three kinds of bees: there’s the queen, then there’s the drone, and there’s the working bees. When the drones get too many, and eat too much, the working bees, they get mad and they sting them to death.”
“I think that work bee thought Lester was drone,” remarked Edwin.
“Wait till I get well,” threatened Lester; “I’ll show you drone!”
“What is the queen?” asked Warren. “And what does it do?”
“Why a queen is a female king,” explained Brush, who was authority on a great many things. “She doesn’t do anything but sit on a big throne and tell people what to do. If they don’t mind her, she makes her soldiers cut their heads off. It’s the same with bees: they have a queen—I don’t think she sits on a throne, but she tells the rest of the bees what to do; and if they don’t mind her, she gets up and goes; then all the rest have to follow her, because they won’t know what to do unless she tells them. That’s what that old queen did today.”
“Why don’t the ’Mericans have a king?” asked Edwin. “They got a President, but I don’t think he’s big like a king.”
“They had one,” said Brush; “but they didn’t like him, because he put a terrible big tax on tea. The ’Mericans are awfully fond of tea, and when they saw they’d have to pay the trader and the king, too, for their tea, they got mad; and one night, when everybody was asleep, they painted up like wild Indians, and they got into a boat and paddled out to the tea ship and climbed in. They hollered and yelled like everything, and scared everybody; then they spilted the tea into the ocean.”
“What did the old king do?” asked Lester.
“Well, he was hopping mad, and he lifted his great big sceptre, and he went up to the man that brought the news, and knocked him over. Then he walked up and down talking loud, and when he got tired he went to his throne and sat down hard.”
“What is a sceptre?” I asked, interrupting the story.
“Why, it’s something like a war club; when the king tells people to do things, he shakes it at them, so they will get scared and mind what he says.”
“I wouldn’t mind him,” said Warren; “I’d make a big sceptre for myself and shake it at him.”
“Well,” continued Brush, “the old king sat still for a long time; then he said to his soldiers, you go and fight those ’Mericans. And they did fight, and had the Rev’lution. That war lasted eight years, and the king’s soldiers got licked. Then the ’Mericans made General George Washington their President because he couldn’t tell a lie.”
The next morning Brush went to the superintendent’s study, and soon came out calling for Warren and Lester. Edwin and I waited under the walnut-tree in front of the school. When the three came to us, they showed us a bright silver dime and an equally bright quarter of a dollar. According to our notions, Warren and his brother were rich, the former having earned the reward offered for the discovery and report of the swarming of the bees, and the latter earning the quarter by climbing the tree on which the swarm had settled.
Brush announced to us that Lester and Warren had been detailed to go after the mail. The post-office was in the trader’s store three miles away from the school, and boys were always very glad to be sent on this errand.
In the afternoon, when school was out, Brush went up to the superintendent’s room to borrow the spyglass, while Edwin and I went in search of Lester and Warren, who had slipped away from us. We could not find them,
