Gate?"

"Certainly not. A fool's eyes are in the ends of the earth. Mine
are in my head." It gorged till it bloated.

Melissa took refuge in her poorly paid field-work and told
Sacharissa the story.

"Hut!" said that wise bee, fretting with an old maid of a
thistle. "Tell us something new. The Hive's full of such as
him--it, I mean."

"What's the end to be? All the honey going out and none coming
in. Things can't last this way!" said Melissa.

"Who cares?" said Sacharissa. "I know now how drones feel the day
before they're killed. 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."