“I can’t say I blame Larue for being mad,” said Bob, “after being driven out of his house for two days running. I suppose he expected to find all quiet this morning, and it’s almost as bad as ever. Then he found these hives and he naturally bombarded them.”
“Well, if he hadn’t brought our honey down here it wouldn’t have happened!” returned Carl, hard-heartedly. “He’ll bombard us, too, if we hang around here long.”
They carried the dilapidated hives down to the boat with a good deal of difficulty, and rowed them up-stream. Two of them were ruined, but it was likely that the bees themselves and the combs would do very well if lodged in fresh hives. The outfit was nearly double its former weight and a later investigation showed that the bees had crammed every available cell with honey and had built fresh scraps of comb in any corner where there was room.
On their return Alice met them with a joyful face.
“What do you think?” she cried. “I’ve been sorting over the cases of sections you brought back, and there are a lot that haven’t been touched by the bees at all—perhaps three or four hundred; and there are quite a lot more that have only little torn places; so they can go as ‘No. 1’ anyway. Then there are all the sections that weren’t stolen at all. We’ll still have some honey to sell.”
“Maybe a hundred dollars’ worth,” returned Carl. “That won’t go far toward our big payment next week.”
“Yes, it will—with our extracted honey,” urged Bob. “We must get it all off, extract every drop we have, and sell it quick—sacrifice it if necessary. Anything to get returns at once!”
“There must be four hundred dollars’ worth on the hives. We can make the payment, if we’re quick,” said Alice.
“Anyway, we won’t have a cent left over,” insisted Carl, who seemed determined to look on the black side.
“But we have the bees. Next year they’ll make our fortunes,” said Alice, cheerfully.