'I'm half stinged up!' moaned poor Bobby. 'I've a great place on my cheek, and just look at my hands!' stretching out the wounded members for sympathy.
'They've stung me all round the back of my neck,' said Peggy. 'I expect it'll hurt ever so when it begins to swell. We'd best go and bathe the places in the lake.'
The water relieved the smart considerably, and Peggy, happily remembering she had a parcel of biscuits in her pockets, pulled them out and suggested some lunch, for Bobby was looking doleful and injured, and inclined to cast aspersions upon her knowledge of bee-keeping.
There were three apiece, all thick arrow-root ones, and I grieve to say this ill-behaved pair had a competition as to which could finish them the quickest. Dry biscuits are choky things, and it is not very easy to eat three off on end, in record time, without drinking.
'I've won!' declared Bobby in triumph, hurriedly swallowing the last morsel, and scooping up a delicious draught of water to wash it down.
'Yes; but you simply bolted your last. You want Miss Wilkins here to teach you manners. What a dear little fat dot she was! I wish we could come across her again.'
'She's gone home. I saw her the day before yesterday in a carriage, with a lady and gentleman and a lot of boxes, and Mrs. Price at the post-office said she had heard Sir Somebody Wilkins was a very great artist in London, and had pictures in the Royal Something-or-other,' explained Bobby lucidly.
'Was it the Royal Academy?'
'I believe it was; but I thought an academy meant a school.'
'So it does sometimes, but I know the Academy is a place where people go to see pictures, because Maud Middleton told me she had her portrait there last year. Talking of Maud, we have never seen anything of Mr. Neville since that party. I wish he would come over to Gorswen.'