“It did not seem as if he did much, did it, dearie!” she said in answer to the look. “But in reality he did a great deal, for he—what shall I say—married? Yes, married! The bee actually married those two buttercups together, so that next season, when these two flowers, the papa and mamma, are dead and gone, there will spring up and grow other buttercups, baby-plants, the children of these two. If it were not for the bee, or other insects, we should have no bright flowers in the world.”
“Oh!” Elsie’s eyes opened wide. She thought a moment, then, “Could he marry my nose to anything?” she burst forth. But seeing the absurdity of the notion before the words were fairly out of her mouth she joined in her mother’s laughter over it. 16
“No, dearie, of course not. It is only flowers that bees marry together. And not the least strange thing about it is that they do not know they are doing so.”
“Don’t know what they are doing!” exclaimed Elsie.
“Oh, yes, they know what they are doing for themselves, but they can’t have the least notion of what they are doing for the flowers and indeed for the whole world! Without plants there could be no life of any kind on earth. It is the plants that produce life. Through them come animals, and even men and women and little girls. The plants feed on the earth and air, which men and animals cannot do. A man or a lamb cannot eat the soil or live on air, but a plant lives by eating the minerals and gases and water of the earth and air, and 17 the man and the lamb eat the plants, and so are able to live. Without the plants we could not exist, and without the insects, which fertilize the plants, so that they can grow, the plants themselves would soon die. Don’t you think now that what the bee did was quite an important matter, even if it did seem so trivial?”
“Ye-yes,” Elsie hesitated. She did not yet grasp the full depth of her mother’s words. They meant so much! “But,” she continued, her bright eyes eagerly turned on her mother’s face, “we don’t eat the buttercup, mamma, do we?”
“No, sweetie, but we do eat very gladly a part of it, and that is the part that the bee visited the flower for, and which he took away as his fee for marrying the two. Can you guess what it is?” 18
The idea of a bee performing a marriage between flowers and taking a fee for it was a little too much for Elsie, and when it was added that she and her mother ate this fee such a look of amazement came into her sweet face that her mother could not help smiling broadly.
“It is the honey, little girlie,” she said. “The bee takes the honey from the flower and carries it home to the hive, where he stores it up until he has a great mass of it, and then the bee-man gets it and sells it to the grocer, who sells it to us.”
“W-e-l-l!” said Elsie slowly, “if that isn’t strange!” She sat a moment thinking of this miracle, her mother watching her lovingly and considering what she ought to say next, for she had a great secret to tell her little daughter, 19 a secret so great and important that much wise thought was required to study out just how to make it plain to a girl as young as Elsie. Besides, she was interested to know what Elsie herself would say next, for she was bringing her up to think logically, so that she might know always how to ask the right question at the right time, instead of the wrong one. And she was very much pleased when Elsie, instead of putting the last question first, as some little girls would have done, put the right one first by saying: