cond-story window and found themselves in a big
room with a floor as smooth as glass. Yet it was composed of man
six-sided cells filled with honey, which could be seen through the
transparent covering. The walls and roof were of the same material, and
at the end of the room was a throne shaped likewise of the honey cells,
like everything else. On a bench along the wall sat several fat and
sleepy-looking bumble-bees, who scarcely woke up when their queen
entered.

"Those are the drones," she said to her visitors. "It is useless to
chide them for their laziness, because they are too stupid to pay
attention to even a good scolding. Don't mind them in any way."

After examining the beautiful throne-room, they visited the sleeping
chambers, of which there were many, and afterward the parlors and
dining-room and the work-rooms.

In these last were many bees building the six-sided pockets or cells
for storing the honey in, or piling them up in readiness for the return
of those who were gathering honey from the flowers.

"We are not really honey-bees," remarked the Queen; "but gathering
honey is our chief business, after all, and we manage to find a lot of
it."

"Won't your houses melt when it rains?" asked Twinkle.

"No, for the comb of the honey is pure wax," the Queen Bee replied.
"Water does not melt it at all."

"Where do you get all the wax?" Chubbins enquired.

"From the flowers, of course. It grows on the stamens, and is a fine
dust called pollen, until we manufacture it into wax. Each of my bees
carries two sacks, one in front of him, to put the honey in, and one
behind to put the wax in."

"That's funny," said the boy-lark.

"I suppose it may be, to you," answered the Queen, "but to us it is a
very natural thing."

[CHAPTER XVIII] _Good News_

Ephel and the children now bade the good-natured Queen Bee good-bye,
and thanked her for her kindness. The Messenger led them far away to
another place that he called a "suburb," and as they emerged from a
thick cluster of trees into a second flower garden they found the air
filled with a great assemblage of butterflies, they being both large
and small in size and colored in almost every conceivable manner.

Twinkle and Chubbins had seen many beautiful butterflies, but never
such magnificent ones as these, nor so many together at one time. Some
of them had wings fully as large as those of the Royal Messenger
himself, even when he spread them to their limit,