A short life and a merry one for me."

"If it only were merry! But think of those awful, solemn, lop-sided
Oddities waiting for us at home crawling and clambering and
preaching--and dirtying things in the dark."

"I don't mind that so much as their silly songs, after we've fed 'em,
all about 'work among the merry, merry blossoms," said Sacharissa from
the deeps of a stale Canterbury bell.

"I do. How's our Queen?" said Melissa.

"Cheerfully hopeless, as usual. But she lays an egg now and then."

"Does she so?" Melissa backed out of the next bell with a jerk. "Suppose
now, we sound workers tried to raise a Princess in some clean corner?"

"You'd be put to it to find one. The Hive's all Wax-moth and muckings.
But--well?"

"A Princess might help us in the time of the Voice behind the Veil that
the Queen talks of. And anything is better than working for Oddities
that chirrup about work that they can't do, and waste what we bring
home."

"Who cares?" said Sacharissa. "I'm with you, for the fun of it. The
Oddities would ball us to death, if they knew. Come home, and we'll
begin."

There is no room to tell how the experienced Melissa found a far-off
frame so messed and mishandled by abandoned cell-building experiments
that, for very shame, the bees never went there. How in that ruin she
blocked out a Royal Cell of sound wax, but disguised by rubbish till it
looked like a kopje among deserted kopjes. How she prevailed upon the
hopeless Queen to make one last effort and lay a worthy egg. How the
Queen obeyed and died. How her spent carcass was flung out on the
rubbish heap, and how a multitude of laying sisters went about dropping
drone-eggs where they listed, and said there was no more need of Queens.
How, covered by this confusion, Sacharissa educated certain young bees
to educate certain new-born bees in the almost lost art of making Royal
Jelly. How the nectar for it was won out of hours in the teeth of chill
winds. How the hidden egg hatched true--no drone, but Blood Royal. How
it was capped, and how desperately they worked to feed and double-feed
the now swarming Oddities, lest any break in the food-supplies should
set them to instituting inquiries, which, with songs about work, was
their favourite amusement. How in an auspicious hour, on a moonless
night, the Princess came forth a Princess indeed, and how Melissa
smuggled her into a dark empty honey-magazine, to bide her time; and
how the drones, knowing she w