hey won't let me
alone. There's two a stinging wi' all their might now. I'm sure I
wonder their strength can last so long."

"All right, friend; I'll hold the candle whilst you are gone," said Mr.
Shiner, leisurely taking the light, and allowing Geoffrey to depart,
which he did with his usual long paces.

He could hardly have gone round to the house-door when other footsteps
were heard approaching the outbuilding; the tip of a finger appeared in
the hole through which the wood latch was lifted, and Dick Dewy came in,
having been all this time walking up and down the wood, vainly waiting
for Shiner's departure.

Fancy looked up and welcomed him rather confusedly. Shiner grasped the
candlestick more firmly, and, lest doing this in silence should not imply
to Dick with sufficient force that he was quite at home and cool, he sang
invincibly--

"'King Arthur he had three sons.'"

"Father here?" said Dick.

"Indoors, I think," said Fancy, looking pleasantly at him.

Dick surveyed the scene, and did not seem inclined to hurry off just at
that moment. Shiner went on singing--

"'The miller was drown'd in his pond,
The weaver was hung in his yarn,
And the d--- ran away with the little tail-or,
With the broadcloth under his arm.'"

"That's a terrible crippled rhyme, if that's your rhyme!" said Dick, with
a grain of superciliousness in his tone.

"It's no use your complaining to me about the rhyme!" said Mr. Shiner.
"You must go to the man that made it."

Fancy by this time had acquired confidence.

"Taste a bit, Mr. Dewy," she said, holding up to him a small circular
piece of honeycomb that had been the last in the row of layers, remaining
still on her knees and flinging back her head to look in his face; "and
then I'll taste a bit too."

"And I, if you please," said Mr. Shiner. Nevertheless the farmer looked
superior, as if he could even now hardly join the trifling from very
importance of station; and after receiving the honeycomb from Fancy, he
turned it over in his hand till the cells began to be crushed, and the
liquid honey ran down from his fingers in a thin string.

Suddenly a faint cry from Fancy caused them to gaze at her.

"What's the matter, dear?" said Dick.

"It is nothing, but O-o! a bee has stung the inside of my lip! He was in
one of the cells I was eating!"

"We must keep down the swelling, or it may be serious!" said Shiner,
stepping up and kneeling beside her.