“One thing strikes me,” said Honeyball, glancing down the tunnel; “I should not much like to have the place of your eldest larva, imprisoned down there in the lowest cell, unable to stir till all her sisters have eaten their way into daylight.”
Violetta gave what in Bee-land is considered a smile. “I have thought of that difficulty, and of a remedy too. I am about to bore a little hole at the end of my tunnel, to give the young bee a way of escape from its prison. And now,” added Violetta, “I will detain you no longer, so much remains to be done, and time is so precious. You probably have something to collect for your hive. I am too much your friend to wish you to be idle.”
Honeyball thanked her new acquaintance and flew away, somewhat the wiser for her visit, but feeling that not for ten pairs of purple wings would she change places with the carpenter-bee.
CHAPTER VIII.
A CHASE, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.
“THERE’S the pedlar! Oh dear! and just as mother has gone out!” cried Polly, who on beginning her afternoon business of nurse to the little children, saw, or thought that she saw, at the end of her lane, a man with a pack travelling along the high-road. “There he is. Oh, if I could only stop him, or if any one would look after the baby whilst I am gone! Minnie Wingfield! Ah, how stupid I am to forget that she is now at the afternoon school! I think that baby would keep very quiet for five minutes; he cannot roll out of his cradle. But Johnny, he’d be tumbling down, or setting the cottage on fire; I cannot leave him for a minute by himself.—Johnny,” said she suddenly, “I want to catch the pedlar and see his pretty things; will you come with me, like a good little boy?”