circular backs, diamond-shaped seats, and chintz cushions with frills.
It was the summer following that in which Jem and I had tried to see how
badly we could behave; this uncivilized phase had abated: Jem used to
ride about a great deal with my father, and I had become intimate with
Isaac Irvine.

"You know what an Apiary is, Isaac?" said I.

"A what, sir?"

"An A-P-I-A-R-Y."

"To be sure, sir, to be sure," said Isaac. "An _appyary_" (so he was
pleased to pronounce it), "I should be familiar with the name, sir, from
my bee-book, but I never calls my own stock anything but the beehives.
_Beehives_ is a good, straightforward sort of a name, sir, and it serves
my turn."

"Ah, but you see we haven't come to the B's yet," said I, alluding to
what I was thinking of.

"Does your father think of keeping 'em, sir?" said Isaac, alluding to
what he was thinking of.

"Oh, he means to have them bound, I believe," was my reply.

The bee-master now betrayed his bewilderment, and we had a hearty laugh
when we discovered that he had been talking about bees whilst I had been
talking about the weekly numbers of the _Penny Cyclopædia_, which had
not as yet reached the letter B, but in which I had found an article on