This I indignantly denied, and Jem supported me.

My mother's sympathy had been so deeply enlisted, and her report was so
detailed, that Jem and I became bored at last, besides resenting the
notion that we had been to blame. I gave one look into the strawberry
jam pot, and finding it empty, said my grace and added, "Women are a
poor lot, always turning up their eyes and having fits about nothing. I
know one thing, nobody 'll ever catch _me_ being bothered with a wife."

"Nor me neither," said Jem.




CHAPTER IV.

"The bee, a more adventurous colonist than man."
W.C. BRYANT.

"Some silent laws our hearts will make,
Which they shall long obey;
We for the year to come may take
Our temper from to-day."--WORDSWORTH.


"You know what an Apiary is, Isaac, of course?"

I was sitting in the bee-master's cottage, opposite to him, in an
arm-chair, which was the counterpart of his own, both of them having