"Those are the servants I mean. I do not think they will hurt you if you are careful. They are only collecting their wages, and working at the same time."
Davy and Prue looked close.
"What do you mean by their working?" asked Davy. "Do you mean for the flower, or for themselves?"
"For both. Watch this bee. You see, he pushes open the flower for honey, but to get it he has to cover his legs with the pollen from the anthers, which are placed down in this little lower part called a keel, just where his legs and body will be covered. Then he comes out and goes to another flower and carries this pollen, and really rubs it on the stigma there as he crawls in and out, and takes more pollen, and so goes on from one to another—a real servant, doing a real duty and getting his pay as he goes."
"But he doesn't have to do it. The pollen would fall on the stigma anyway, wouldn't it?"
"It might with the sweet-pea, but even if it did, the pollen from the same flower is not as good as the pollen from another flower from a different plant, and the seed would be poor and the plants would grow weaker every year. There are many insects that act as servants to the flowers, and the wind is one of the servants, too. It shakes the corn-tassel so that the pollen falls on the silk and makes the ear, and it carries the pollen of one stalk to the silk of another—sometimes from one field to another."
"But, of course, the bee doesn't know that he does it," said Prue, who was still very intently watching the little servants of the sweet-pease.
"I am not so certain of that," the Chief Gardener said musingly. "The flower must know, for it dresses in bright colors so that the bee may see it, and offers honey as pay for his work. And if the flower knows, why shouldn't the bee?"
"But don't you think it might all just happen so?" asked Davy.