“This investment hasn’t panned out, Alice,” he said, when they were well away from the cabin. “We’re not going to make a cent profit this year. I blame myself for it, for I got you both into it.”
“Nonsense, Bob!” returned Alice. “We were just as eager as you were. We all rushed into it, and we all knew that it was a gamble on the weather.”
“Well, anyhow, I’m not going back to college next term. Carl will want me to, I know, but you must back me up. I couldn’t use any money that way. We’ll be hard up at the best, and I won’t have you two rob yourselves for my support.”
“Oh, Bob! You must go back!”
“Well, I won’t. What’s a year lost, anyhow. But I’m uncertain what to do. I could come up here and trap all winter. I’m sure I could make several hundred dollars, all clear profit; but trapping is a sort of gamble, too. Or I could get a job any time with the Toronto Electric Company at about fifteen a week. Trapping would be more fun, but the other would be surer, and I’d get a lot of practical experience. What do you think?”
“I don’t know!” said Alice, half laughing and half crying. “Oh, I don’t know, Bob. I think—I think we’d better harvest our honey first and see how it turns out.”
And the next day they began to harvest the crop.
CHAPTER VI
ROBBING THE ROBBER
It was the comb honey in the one-pound sections on which they were depending for an early sale at a fancy price, and naturally they wished to take this off first. The only place to pile and sort it was in the cabin, and they proceeded to turn the boys’ bedroom into a storehouse. There was no furniture to take out; they merely removed the bedding, and laid boards over the bunk to make a platform. Carl nailed wire gauze over the window, and Bob constructed a rough screen for the outer door. With the bees in that fierce robbing humor the place must, above all things, be kept bee-tight.
It was a ticklish task to take off the supers, for the bees were intensely irritable, and a hive was no more than opened when a host of robbers collected, eager to pilfer a mouthful. The boys had to be quick in their movements. Bob opened the hive, and the moment the lid was up Carl drove great blasts of smoke into the super, at the same time keeping enough smoke in the surrounding air to repel the thieves. Bob then seized the super, knocked it on the ground to jar out the few bees left in it, and hurried with it to the cabin.