THE BEE BOY'S SONG Bees! Bees! Hark to your bees! 'Hide from your neighbours as much as you please, But all that has happened, to us you must tell. Or else we will give you no honey to sell!' A maiden in her glory, Must tell her Bees the story, Fly away-die away— Dwindle down and leave you! But if you don't deceive your Bees, Marriage, birth or buryin', News across the seas, All you're sad or merry in, You must tell the Bees. Tell 'em coming in an' out, Where the Fanners fan, Don't you wait where trees are, Nor don't you hate where Bees are, Pine away-dwine away— But if you never grieve your Bees, 'DYMCHURCH FLIT’ UST at dusk, a soft September rain began to fall on the hop-pickers. The mothers wheeled the bouncing perambulators out of the gardens; bins were put away, and tally-books made up. The young couples strolled home, two to each umbrella, and the single men walked behind them laughing. Dan and Una, who had been picking after their lessons, marched off to roast potatoes at the oast-house, where old Hobden, with Blue-eyed Bess, his lurcher dog, lived all the month through, drying the hops. They settled themselves, as usual, on the sack-strewn cot in front of the fires, and, when Hobden drew up the shutter, stared, as usual, at the flameless bed of coals spouting its heat up the dark well of the old-fashioned roundel. Slowly he cracked off a few fresh pieces of coal, packed them, with fingers that never flinched, exactly where they would do most good; slowly he reached behind him till Dan tilted the potatoes into his iron scoop of a hand; carefully he arranged them round the fire, and then stood for a moment, black against the glare. As he closed the shutter, the oast-house seemed dark before the day's end, and he lit the candle in the lanthorn. The children liked all these things because they knew them so well. The Bee Boy, Hobden's son, who is not quite right in his head, though he can do anything with bees, slipped |