"Have they been gone long?" asked Phil, more interested in the girls than in the bees. Finding that they had been away more than an hour, and that it was almost time for their return, he settled himself to wait, feigning an interest almost as great as Mary's in the saucer of sugar and water. There was something comical to him always in Mary's serious moods, and the grave expression of the little round face, as it hung over the edge of the hammock, promised enough amusement to make the time pass agreeably.
"When one bee gets all he can carry, he goes and tells the others," explained Mary. "I've had six, so far. I suppose you know about Huber," she asked, looking up eagerly. "I didn't till Mr. Ellestad read us a lot about him out of one of the books he brought."
"I've heard of him," answered Phil, smiling, as he saw how much she wanted the pleasure of repeating her newly gained knowledge. "Suppose you tell me."
"Well, he was born in Switzerland—in Geneva, and when Lloyd found that out, she was ready to read anything he had written, or to study anything he was interested in. She just loves Geneva. That was where she met the major who gave her Hero, her Red Cross war-dog, you know, and that is where he saved her life, by stopping a runaway horse.
"Well, Huber went blind when he was just a boy, and he would have had a terribly lonesome time if it hadn't been for the bees. He began to study them, and they were so interesting that he went on studying them his whole life. He had somebody to help him, of course, who watched the hives, and told him what went on inside, and he found out more about them than anybody had ever done before, and wrote books about them. It is two hundred years since then, and a whole library has been written about bees since then, but his books are still read, and considered among the best.
"Holland said, Pooh! the bees couldn't teach him anything. He'd just as soon go to a school of grasshoppers, and that I'd be a goose if I spent my time watching 'em eat sugar and water out of a dish. He was going off fishing with George Lee. He wouldn't wait to hear what Mr. Ellestad had to say. But all the fish in the canal wouldn't do me as much good as one thing I learned from the bees."
"What was that?" asked Phil, lazily, stretching himself out full length on the grass, and pulling his hat over his eyes.
"Sometimes it happens that something gets into the hives that don't belong there; like a slug. Once a mouse got in one, and it told in the book about a child dropping a snail in one. Well, the bees can sting such things to death, but they're not strong enough to drag them out after they're dead, and if the dead bodies stayed in the hives they'd spoil everything after awhile. So the bees just cover them all over with wax, make an air-tight cell, and seal them up in it. Isn't that smart? Then they just leave it there and go off about their business, and forget about it. Mr. Ellestad said that's what people ought to do with their troubles that can't be cured, but have to be endured. They ought to seal them up tight, and stop talking and fretting about them—keep them away from the air, he said, seal them up so they won't poison their whole life. That set me to thinking about the trouble that is poisoning my happiness, and I made up my mind I'd pretend it was just a snail that had crept into my hive. I can't change it, I can't drag it out, but I won't let it spoil all my honey."
"Well, bless my soul!" exclaimed Phil, sitting up very straight, and looking at her with an interest that was unfeigned this time. "What trouble can a child like you have, that is so bad as all that?"