"That's the way we do it," she said. "And a Yellow Jacket is stronger than a Black Bee."
"Yes," replied Saggia, wagging her old head wisely, "but not stronger than ten Black Bees, or a hundred, and that is the way they come."
As Saggia finished speaking, the guards who had driven the Yellow Jacket away returned boisterously, and joining all the other guards on the platform, formed in a line, and half-marching, half-dancing, went through some military maneuvers. While they were doing this, another lot of guards came out of the hive, and forming in a line opposite them, also went through the martial dance. At the end of it all the guards who had been outside marched into the hive, while the new ones remained outside on the platform. It was the "relief of the guard."
All during the guards' dancing and marching, Nuova had stood still watching them intently. Neither Saggia nor Beffa had seen her yet. And she was afraid to speak to them for fear of being made to go back into the hive again. She had made up her mind to stay outside. It was all so much more beautiful and exciting out here. She had decided that she would not be a nurse or wax-maker or anything else inside the hive any longer. She wanted to be a forager and be free to go in and out as she liked, and to fly far out into the garden and spend long, sunshiny hours there.
Just then, however, Saggia caught sight of her. It was, indeed, Beffa who saw her first. He quietly touched Saggia with one of his antennæ and waved the other in Nuova's direction. Saggia hurried over to her, looking anxiously around her to see if any other bees had noticed Nuova.
"What are you doing out here?" whispered Saggia to her as she reached her side. "Who sent you out? It isn't time for a week yet for you to come outside."
Saggia wanted to be angry with her, but the sight of Nuova, so sad and forlorn-looking, and with tear-marks still on her face, was too much for her kind heart. And she really loved Nuova very much. Indeed, all that Nuova had done, and what she had said, had made a strange appeal to the wise old bee. She was almost frightened sometimes to feel that down deep in her heart she not only sympathized with much of Nuova's revolt against the rigid traditions and automatic life of the bees, but that she realized that this stifling of all independent action and all personal emotions was not always the way to the highest happiness nor even the wisest conduct for the bees. She shuddered to think that perhaps she, too, was a "new bee."
Nuova was half-frightened by Saggia's discovery of her and by her hard words. But she answered her willfully and defiantly, although with a touch of attractive mischievousness.
"Nobody sent me out," she said. "I have just decided to be a forager; that's all. While I was in the hive a little while ago a forager came in with two great loads of pollen in her pollen baskets. She was very tired and seemed sick. While she was looking around for an empty cell in which to put her pollen, she suddenly sank down—and—and died."
Nuova shivered as she said this, and dropped her antennæ down over her eyes for a moment.