Whereupon Mrs. Middlerib asked him if he had eaten anything that disagreed with him, and Miss Middlerib said:
"Why, pa!" and Master Middlerib smiled as he wondered.
Bedtime at last, and the night was warm and sultry. Under various false pretenses, Mr. Middlerib strolled about the house until everybody else was in bed, and then he sought his room. He turned the lamp down until its feeble ray shone dimly as a death-light.
Mr. Middlerib disrobed slowly—very slowly. When at last he was ready to go lumbering into his peaceful couch, he heaved a profound sigh, so full of apprehension and grief that Mrs. Middlerib, who was awakened by it, said if it gave him so much pain to come to bed perhaps he had better sit up all night. Mr. Middlerib choked another sigh, but said nothing and crept into bed. After lying still a few moments he reached out and got his bottle of bees.
It was not an easy thing to do to pick one bee out of the bottle with his fingers and not get into trouble. The first bee Mr. Middlerib got was a little brown honey-bee, that wouldn't weigh half an ounce if you picked him up by the ears, but if you lifted him by the hind leg would weigh as much as the last end of a bay mule. Mr. Middlerib could not repress a groan.
"What's the matter with you?" sleepily asked his wife.
It was very hard for Mr. Middlerib to say he only felt hot, but he did it. He didn't have to lie about it, either. He did feel very hot indeed—about eighty-six all over, and one hundred and ninety-seven on the end of his thumb. He reversed the bee and pressed the warlike terminus of it firmly against the rheumatic knee.
It didn't hurt so badly as he thought it would.
It didn't hurt at all.
Then Mr. Middlerib remembered that when the honey-bee stabs a human foe it generally leaves its harpoon in the wound, and the invalid knew that the only thing this bee had to sting with was doing its work at the end of his thumb.