“Sipsyrup, looking as though she had been in the wars!” exclaimed Waxywill, who, in the pride of her heart, had always looked with contempt on her vain, silly companion.
“My poor Sipsyrup!” cried Silverwing, hastening towards her. Their feelers met (that is the way of embracing in Bee-land), the kind bee said little, but by every friendly act in her power showed her pity and anxiety to give comfort.
What pleased Sipsyrup most was the absence of Stickasting, who had not returned to the hive which she had left an hour before in a passion.
After resting for a little on a half-finished cell, while Silverwing with her slender tongue gently smoothed her ruffled down, and brought a drop of honey to refresh her, Sipsyrup felt well enough to relate her sad story, to which a little group of surrounding bees listened with no small interest. Sipsyrup left altogether out of her account the fine compliments paid her by Spinaway, she could not bear that her vanity should be known; but she gained little by hiding the truth, as this only made her folly appear more unaccountable.
MINNIE AT THE HIVE.
“I cannot understand,” said Waxywill, “how any bee in her senses could fly into a web with her eyes open.”
“When there was not even a drop of honey to be gained by it,” hummed Honeyball.
Sipsyrup hastened to the end of her story, and related how she had been saved from the spider by the timely help of a kind little girl.