"She's just seventeen, but sometimes she acts like a kiddy of twelve. Mother says she doesn't know what to do with her, the child is so full of capers."
As the two girls entered the Homer apartment, Beatrice Homer ran to meet them.
"Oh, you're Patty Fairfield! I KNOW you are! Aren't you the loveliest thing ever! You look like a bisque ornament to set on a mantel-piece. Are you real?"
She poked her finger in Patty's dimpled cheek, but she was so roguish and playful, that Patty could not feel annoyed with her.
"Let me look at you," Patty said, holding her off, "and see what YOU'RE like. Why, you're a gipsy, an elfin sprite, a witch of the woods! You have no business to be named Beatrice."
"I know it," said Bee, dancing around on her toes. "But my nickname isn't so bad for me, is it?" And she waved her arms and hovered around Patty, making a buzzing noise like a real bee.
"Don't sting me!" cried Patty.
"Oh, I don't sting my friends! I'm a honey-bee. A dear, little, busy, buzzy honey-bee!" And she kept on dancing around and buzzing till Patty put out her hand as if to brush her away.
"Buzz away, Bee, but get a little farther off,—you drive me distracted."
"That's the way she always acts," said Marie, with a sigh; "we can't do anything with her! It's a pity she was ever nicknamed Bee, for, when she begins buzzing, she's a regular nuisance."