watch."

As I walked across the lawn, I heard the wretched girl reading from The
Busy Bee-Keeper:

"Toads are among the bees' most deadly enemies. They will sit at the
mouth of a hive and snap up bees as fast as they emerge..."

Till then I had always been rather against toads.

I well remember the day on which I learned of the purchase of the bees.
It had been raining the night before and all day the clouds hung low
and threatening. Misfortune was in the air. Their actual advent I do
not recollect, for when I had heard that they were to arrive on
Saturday night, I had made a point of going away for the week-end.

On my return I avoided the kitchen garden assiduously for several days,
but after a while I began to get used to the presence of the bees, and
their old straw home--I could see it from my bedroom--looked rather
pretty and comfortable.

Then Daphne, who never will leave ill alone, had announced that they
must be moved into a new hive.

In vain I characterized her project as impious, wanton, and indecent in
turn.

A new hive, something resembling a Swiss chalet was ordered, and
with it came two pairs of gauntlets and some veils which looked like
meat-safes. Oh yes, and a 'smoker'.

The 'smoker' was the real nut.

At a distance of five paces this useful invention might have been
mistaken for a small cannon. As a matter of fact, it consisted of a
pair of bellows, with the nozzle, which was very large, on the top
instead of at the end. As touching the 'smoker' the method of
procedure was as follows:--One lighted a roll of brown paper, blew It
out again and placed it in the nozzle. Then, telling the gardener's
boy to stand by with the salvolatile, one began to blow the bellows.
Immediately the instrument belched forth clouds of singularly offensive
smoke.

One might think that, if this were done in the vicinity of a hive, such
a proceeding would tend to irritate the bees into a highly dangerous,
if warrantable, frenzy, and that they would take immediate steps to
abate the nuisance in their own simple way. But that, my brothers, is
where we are wrong. Where bees are concerned, the 'smoker's' fumes are
of a soporific and soothing nature. Indeed, before a puff of its smoke
a bee's naughty malice and resentment disappear, and the bee itself
sinks, gently humming, into the peaceful, contented slumber of a little
che-ild.

At least, that was what the books said.

Seven o'clock that evening f