Burning with impatience, they hurried up the river as fast as the heavy old tub could be driven against the stream. Without waiting to tie the boat, they ran to the apiary. The air was full of a heavy roar. Bees were coming in by thousands and dropping on the hive-entrances. It was like the best days of the raspberry flow. Carl seized his sister by the waist and joyously hugged her.
“It seems too good to be true! If it only lasts! Won’t Bob be astonished when he gets here?”
Bob did not arrive till late the next afternoon. He had walked all the way from Morton to save the expense of a conveyance and he was very tired. He had also probably been meditating on their financial state, for he seemed depressed; but Carl and Alice said nothing at once about the sudden change in their prospects.
The bees had ceased flying for the day, but from all the hives, where the new honey was being ripened, came a heavy roar. After supper Bob walked out towards the hives and noticed it. He stopped to listen, and scrutinized the entrances closely.
“Been feeding them?” he asked at last, with a perplexed look.
“No,” answered Carl, gravely.
“Surely they can’t have been gathering anything, can they?”
“Gathering anything!” Carl burst out, unable to hold the secret any longer. “I guess those bees have gathered about a thousand pounds of honey in the last two days. The fireweed is in bloom, Bob. We never thought of that, did we? There are miles of it! It yields honey by the ton, and if we just get regular rains we’ll have our eighteen-hundred-dollar crop yet.”
Bob could hardly believe the news till he had looked into some of the supers himself, where great patches of clear, white honey already showed. Then his enthusiasm knew no bounds.
“I was just beginning to think we’d been fools to go into this apiary game,” he exclaimed. “But this puts a different color on the thing. If we only get the right weather, now!”