“Yes, and with something to the good!” cried Alice.
In their relief and joy they joined hands and performed a wild dance around the shipping cases. It did not last long, though, for they were tired and stiff with bending over the supers; they were gummy with propolis and wax, and sticky with honey, and on the window was a cluster of bees the size of a small swarm, which had been carried in with the honey. After dark Carl brushed them off into a bucket, carried them out, and poured them down in front of a weak hive. They crawled gladly in, and as they all had their sacs full of honey, they were admitted. A honey-laden bee is always welcome to any hive.
The comb honey had to be sold at once, for the time was growing short. Bob proposed that he should go over to Morton and make the sale in Toronto by telegraph, or by long-distance telephone if he could get connections. It was a good plan, but Carl was anxious to be on hand to hear how the negotiations went; Alice was no less eager, and was, moreover, unwilling to be left alone at the cabin, so it ended in preparations for all of them to go to Morton and make the deal together.
“Above all things, we must be careful to leave the cabin bee-tight,” Alice warned them. “Just fancy the bees finding a way in. They’d carry all that honey back to the hives before we got home.”
So they plugged every chink in the logs most carefully with wet clay and moss, looked to the wire screens, and even blocked up the chimney. The cabin door they fastened with a big padlock and chain, and Alice packed up half a dozen of the best sections for a gift to Mr. Farr.
“No use trying to sweeten him,” Bob warned her. “He’ll take it, but he’ll be as hard as nails with us all the same. He keeps business and friendship separate, you know.”
“Anyway I’m going to take him the honey. I rather like him, you know,” Alice persisted.
They went down in the boat, a slow and rather lazy drift with the current in the warm morning sunshine. About noon they reached Morton, and found that they could get telegraph connections at the railway station, and long-distance telephone at the hotel.
As a first step, Bob telegraphed to the headquarters of the Provincial Bee-keepers’ Association to learn what the season had been throughout the country, and how prices were ranging. It was two o’clock in the afternoon before the reply came; the waiting had been something of a strain, and Bob looked nervous when he ripped open the yellow envelope, but then his face brightened.
“Splendid! Listen to this!” he cried.