It was a glorious day in October. The Indian summer had come, flooding all the hills and vales with its magical sheets of amethyst, while a drowsy wind from the south bore on its breath the odor of autumn. Now and then that indefinable note, presaging the advent of winter—a note which is neither a requiem nor a dirge—could be heard like a faint flute in the branches of the trees. The sun shone big and round and still with a suggestion of summer. Scattered clouds went drifting lazily by, wonderfully emphasizing the turquoise blue of the sky.
“Is it going to rain?” I asked of Crip, who was dragging himself along on the alighting-board, ready for a new excursion into the woods.
“No,” he mumbled.
It had been weeks since my experience in the flood, but ever after that when a cloud was in the sky I bethought me of rain. But I had now come to know that rains were something more than clouds.
Crip and I had been laboring to fill adjoining cells. We had already gathered many loads of honey that day. “I’m tired,” he said, right plaintively. “I can’t do as much as I could once.”
“Why don’t you rest?” I begged of him.
“Rest! What word is that? Did ever a bee rest when there was work to do?”
With that he hobbled a little farther on his four legs, his poor old body half carried and half dragged. But his wings were still powerful and lifted him instantly into the all-absorbing space.
This time I took an entirely different direction from any I had thus far traveled. On and on I flew, mile after mile, until presently I scented something and went for it. It proved to be a field of June corn, in silk and tassel—and, oh, what quantities of pollen! I gathered a little and hastened back to report. Almost at once a string of my brothers were flying to and fro, laden with bread.
We had now stored up a great surplus of food, and the Queen-Mother broadened her brood areas. She deemed it wise to enlarge her family; first, because she had a premonition that a wild winter would soon break upon us, and, for the further reason, that half the battle was to be strong in numbers in the spring, when the honey-fountains opened.