"Nor I, either," began Joyce. "I'll tell you about it some other time," she added, as Holland burst in, demanding to see the duck that Lloyd had killed. Mary had run down the road to meet him with the news, but he stoutly declined to believe that a girl could have accomplished such a feat, until he had the proof of it in his hands. Then to Lloyd's delight he claimed the honour of picking it. She felt that she would rather throw it away than go through the ordeal herself, yet she could not impose such a task on any one else at such a late hour on a busy Saturday.
"Oh, if you only will," she cried, "I'll let you use my rifle all next Saturday. I didn't see how I could possibly touch it! That down is so thick undah the long outside feathahs, that it would be as bad as picking a—a cat!"
Holland ripped out a handful with a look of fine scorn. "Well, if you aren't the funniest!" he exclaimed. "Girls are awful finicky," he confided to Mary later. "I'm glad that I'm not one."
CHAPTER X.
THE SCHOOL OF THE BEES
With her slipper toes caught in the meshes of the hammock to keep her from falling out, and with her head hanging over nearly to the ground, Mary lay watching something beneath her, with breathless interest.
"What is it, Mary?" called Phil, as he came up and threw himself down on the grass beside her, in the shade of the bushy umbrella-tree.
She pointed to a saucer of sugar and water just below her, on the edge of which several bees had alighted. "I put it there," she said, in a low tone, as if afraid of disturbing the bees. "Mr. Ellestad has been telling us how smart they are, and I wanted to watch them do some of their strange things myself. He wants Joyce to raise bees instead of chickens or squabs or any of the things they were talking about doing. He came up after dinner with some books, and told us so much about them, that I learned more than I would in a whole week in school. Joyce and Lloyd were so interested that, as soon as he left, they rode right over to Mr. Shaw's bee ranch to find out how much a hive costs, and all about it."