ble out!" she called across the youngsters' quarters. "All
you who aren't feeding babies, show a leg. Scrap-wax pillars for the
Ga-ate!" She chanted the order at length.

"That's nonsense," a downy, day-old bee answered. "In the first place, I
never heard of a Death's Header coming into a hive. People don't do
such things. In the second, building pillars to keep 'em out is purely
a Cypriote trick, unworthy of British bees. In the third, if you trust
a Death's Head, he will trust you. Pillar-building shows lack of
confidence. Our dear sister in grey says so."

"Yes. Pillars are un-English and provocative, and a waste of wax that
is needed for higher and more practical ends," said the Wax-moth from an
empty store-cell.

"The safety of the Hive is the highest thing I've ever heard of. You
mustn't teach us to refuse work," Melissa began.

"You misunderstand me, as usual, love. Work's the essence of life;
but to expend precious unreturning vitality and real labour against
imaginary danger, that is heartbreakingly absurd! If I can only teach
a--a little toleration--a little ordinary kindness here toward that
absurd old bogey you call the Death's Header, I shan't have lived in
vain."

"She hasn't lived in vain, the darling!" cried twenty bees together.
"You should see her saintly life, Melissa! She just devotes herself to
spreading her principles, and--and--she looks lovely!"

An old, baldish bee came up the comb.

"Pillar-workers for the Gate! Get out and chew scraps. Buzz off!" she
said. The Wax-moth slipped aside.

The young bees trooped down the frame, whispering. "What's the matter
with 'em?" said the oldster. "Why do they call each other 'ducky' and
'darling'? Must be the weather." She sniffed suspiciously. "Horrid
stuffy smell here. Like stale quilts. Not Wax-moth, I hope, Melissa?"

"Not to my knowledge," said Melissa, who, of course, only knew the
Wax-moth as a lady with principles, and had never thought to report
her presence. She had always imagined Wax-moths to be like blood-red
dragon-flies.

"You had better fan out this corner for a little," said the old bee and
passed on. Melissa dropped her head at once, took firm hold with her
fore-feet, and fanned obediently at the regulation stroke three hundred
beats to the second. Fanning tries a bee's temper, because she must
always keep in the same place where she never seems to be doing any
good, and, all the while, she is wearing out her only wings. When a