The others exchanged smiles. If there was any among the group who showed signs of that second childhood which is given to great age, it was gruff, kindly, honest old John. He did not feel, he rarely appeared, any older than his young and constant companion. He still “served” Mr. Brook, but would have been dumfounded had that generous old “master” actually requested any service; and it was a saying in the neighborhood that “Dolloway owned the whole Brook household.” Which was not quite true; though this is true, that Mr. Chidly and Miss Joanna, feeling profoundly grateful for the wonderful vitality and soundness of intellect with which a good God and right living had blessed their own old age, felt also a parental interest and care over the more restricted powers of this venerable, faithful friend.
“The bees! I haven’t seen the apiary for a week!” exclaimed Mr. Brook. “If it will not delay our hostess, let us visit that before the busy workers have retired for the night. I am never tired, never, of watching these tiny creatures, nor of learning from them. By the way, Beatrice, that little article of yours on ‘The Mechanism of the Bee’s Sting’ has just been published in the ‘Magazine of Natural History’ for this month. Did you know it?”
Bonny made a little grimace, and pointed proudly toward the orderly city of hives, which now really deserved the name of apiary, and which had acquired a reputation throughout many States, so that the “Beckwith” supplies of all sorts of bee-stock were in good demand among the markets; which was only the beginning of what this ambitious girl of seventeen hoped to accomplish. “For I will not stop, if I can possibly help it, till I have earned and saved enough to give my little brother a college education. The rest of us have had to do without, but there’s no reason why we shouldn’t have one scholar in the family!”
To which Robert listened with perfect complacency and the reflection that if he did “go to college he’d be the champion of the football team, anyhow!”
He bade fair to excel in anything athletic, certainly, and, for Bonny’s sake, let us hope he will in things scholastic. He did, indeed, stand at the head of his class at the public school he attended, and his mathematical powers were excellent. But, at his age, there is no calculating with exactness what he may prove to be in the years to come.
As they turned houseward again, after a close inspection of the well-kept apiary, Mrs. Beckwith slipped an arm about her younger daughter’s waist. “What is this I hear, dearie? Have you taken to writing for the press?”
“If I had, Motherkin, I should have had to tell you at once. But it was this way: Mr. Brook is kind enough to say I can put things quite clearly on paper, with my little typewriter; and I happened to please him with some notes I made. So nothing would answer but I must write them out more fully and let him send them to the magazine he mentioned. Of course, they wouldn’t refuse to publish anything he sent! So—that’s all there is to that story! Therefore, little Madam, don’t lay the flattering unction to your soul that you are the parent of a literary creature. You are not; only of a common-sense, happy, healthy, hard-working little girl!”
There was a close pressure of the hand, and Mrs. Beckwith rejoined her guests. Talk about queens! That little woman, with the soft gray hair and the loving smile upon her lips, thought that there was never a human being so rich and so blessed as she.
In five minutes more they were all seated at the well-arranged table, the sight of which, Miss Joanna declared, “would give even a dyspeptic an appetite!”
Yet Mr. Brook’s eyes wandered about the apartment curiously. “I never enter this room but I find something new in it to admire. Joanna, look behind you, please!”