'
'That gives him a sporting chance of smelling a cigar--what? I
mean to say, if he misses with eight hundred of his nostrils he's
apt to get it with the other thirty-seven thousand.'
Elizabeth was feeling annoyed with her bees. They resolutely
declined to sting this young man. Bees flew past him, bees flew
into him, bees settled upon his coat, bees paused questioningly in
front of him, as who should say, 'What have we here?' but not a
single bee molested him. Yet when Nutty, poor darling, went within
a dozen yards of the hives he never failed to suffer for it. In
her heart Elizabeth knew perfectly well that this was because
Nutty, when in the presence of the bees, lost his head completely
and behaved like an exaggerated version of Lady Wetherby's Dream
of Psyche, whereas Bill maintained an easy calm; but at the moment
she put the phenomenon down to that inexplicable cussedness which
does so much to exasperate the human race, and it fed her
annoyance with her unbidden guest.
Without commenting on his last remark, she took the smoker from
him and set to work. She inserted in the fire-chamber a handful of
the cotton-waste and set fire to it; then with a preliminary puff
or two of the bellows to make sure that the conflagration had not
gone out, she aimed the nozzle at the front door of the hive.
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