'
'For Heaven's sake!'
'Good-bye, Nutty, dear; I mustn't keep him waiting.'
Lord Dawlish looked with interest at the various implements which
she had collected when she rejoined him outside. He relieved her
of the stool, the smoker, the cotton-waste, the knife, the
screwdriver, and the queen-clipping cage.
'Let me carry these for you,' he said, 'unless you've hired a
van.'
Elizabeth disapproved of this flippancy. It was out of place in
one who should have been trembling at the prospect of doom.
'Don't you wear a veil for this sort of job?'
As a rule Elizabeth did. She had reached a stage of intimacy with
her bees which rendered a veil a superfluous precaution, but until
to-day she had never abandoned it. Her view of the matter was
that, though the inhabitants of the hives were familiar and
friendly with her by this time and recognized that she came among
them without hostile intent, it might well happen that among so
many thousands there might be one slow-witted enough and obtuse
enough not to have grasped this fact. And in such an event a veil
was better than any amount of explanations, for you cannot stick
to pure reason when quarrelling with bees.
But to-day it had struck her that she could hardly protect herself
in this way without offering a similar safeguard to her visitor,
and she had no wish to hedge him about with safeguards.
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