"What is the queen?" asked Warren. "And what does it do?"
"Why a queen is a female king," explained Brush, who was authority on a great many things. "She doesn't do anything but sit on a big throne and tell people what to do. If they don't mind her, she makes her soldiers cut their heads off. It's the same with bees: they have a queen,—I don't think she sits on a throne, but she tells the rest of the bees what to do; and if they don't mind her, she gets up and goes; then all the rest have to follow her, because they won't know what to do unless she tells them. That's what that old queen did to-day."
"Why don't the 'Mericans have a king?" asked Edwin. "They got a President, but I don't think he's big like a king."
"They had one," said Brush; "but they didn't like him, because he put a terrible big tax on tea. The 'Mericans are awfully fond of tea, and when they saw they'd have to pay the trader and the king, too, for their tea, they got mad; and one night, when everybody was asleep, they painted up like wild Indians, and they got into a boat and paddled out to the tea ship and climbed in. They hollered and yelled like everything, and scared everybody; then they spilted the tea into the ocean."
"What did the old king do?" asked Lester.
"Well, he was hopping mad, and he lifted his great big sceptre, and he went up to the man that brought the news, and knocked him over. Then he walked up and down talking loud, and when he got tired he went to his throne and sat down hard."
"What is a sceptre?" I asked, interrupting the story.
"Why, it's something like a war club; when the king tells people to do things, he shakes it at them, so they will get scared and mind What he says."
"I wouldn't mind him," said Warren; "I'd make a big sceptre for myself and shake it at him."
"Well," continued Brush, "the old king sat still for a long time; then he said to his soldiers, you go and fight those 'Mericans. And they did fight, and had the Rev'lution. That war lasted eight years, and the king's soldiers got licked. Then the 'Mericans made General George Washington their President because he couldn't tell a lie."