oyed some days earlier, and, demoralized by affliction, were now
getting a living as marauders about the doors of other hives. Several
flew round the head and neck of Geoffrey; then darted upon him with an
irritated bizz.

Enoch threw down the lantern, and ran off and pushed his head into a
currant bush; Fancy scudded up the path; and Mr. Shiner floundered away
helter-skelter among the cabbages. Geoffrey stood his ground, unmoved
and firm as a rock. Fancy was the first to return, followed by Enoch
picking up the lantern. Mr. Shiner still remained invisible.

"Have the craters stung ye?" said Enoch to Geoffrey.

"No, not much--on'y a little here and there," he said with leisurely
solemnity, shaking one bee out of his shirt sleeve, pulling another from
among his hair, and two or three more from his neck. The rest looked on
during this proceeding with a complacent sense of being out of it,--much
as a European nation in a state of internal commotion is watched by its
neighbours.

"Are those all of them, father?" said Fancy, when Geoffrey had pulled
away five.

"Almost all,--though I feel one or two more sticking into my shoulder and
side. Ah! there's another just begun again upon my backbone. You lively
young mortals, how did you get inside there? However, they can't sting
me many times more, poor things, for they must be getting weak. They mid
as well stay in me till bedtime now, I suppose."

As he himself was the only person affected by this arrangement, it seemed
satisfactory enough; and after a noise of feet kicking against cabbages
in a blundering progress among them, the voice of Mr. Shiner was heard
from the darkness in that direction.

"Is all quite safe again?"

No answer being returned to this query, he apparently assumed that he
might venture forth, and gradually drew near the lantern again. The
hives were now removed from their position over the holes, one being
handed to Enoch to carry indoors, and one being taken by Geoffrey
himself.

"Bring hither the lantern, Fancy: the spade can bide."

Geoffrey and Enoch then went towards the house, leaving Shiner and Fancy
standing side by side on the garden-plot.

"Allow me," said Shiner, stooping for the lantern and seizing it at the
same time with Fancy.

"I can carry it," said Fancy, religiously repressing all inclination to
trifle. She had thoroughly considered that subject after the tearful
explanation of the bird-catching adventure to Dick