“Sure sign of swarming at this season. Inside, if you could look, you’d find plenty of queen cells, and some capped over. You’d come across a murder or two as well. The old queens make short work of the young ones sometimes.”
“Woman-like.”
Hicks admitted the criticism was just. Then, being now upon his own ground, he continued to talk, and talk well, until he won a surly compliment from his employer.
“You’re a bee-master, in truth! Nobody’ll deny you that.”
Clement laughed rather bitterly.
“Yes, a king of bees. Not a great kingdom for man to rule.”
The other studied his dark, unhappy face. Trouble had quickened Grimbal’s own perceptions, and made him a more accurate judge of sorrow when he saw it than of yore.
“You’ve tried to do greater things and failed, perhaps,” he said.
“Why, perhaps I have. A man’s a hive himself, I’ve thought sometimes—a hive of swarming, seething thoughts and experiences and passions, that come and go as easily as any bees, and store the heart and brain.”
“Not with honey, I’ll swear.”