{"collection":"folklore-oral-tradition","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_39248/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_39248","id":"gutenberg_39248","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39248","summary":null,"tags":["Bees -- Folklore","Bees -- Juvenile fiction","Category: Children & Young Adult Reading","Category: Science-Fiction & Fantasy"],"text":"Produced by David Edwards, Mary Meehan and the Online\nDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This\nfile was produced from images generously made available\nby The Internet Archive)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n                          NUOVA\n\n                      or THE NEW BEE\n\n\n                   A Story for Children\n                   of Five to Fifty by\n\n                     VERNON KELLOGG\n\n    With Songs by\n    CHARLOTTE KELLOGG\n\n    Illustrated by\n    Milo Winter\n\n    HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY\n    Boston and New York\n\n    COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY VERNON KELLOGG AND\n    HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY\n\n    ALL RIGHTS RESERVED\n\n\n        TO\n       JEAN\n    WHO IS FIVE\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: \"Nuova, I love you\"]\n\n\n\n\nPREFATORY NOTE\n\n\nMost of this that I have written about bees is true: what is not, does\nnot pretend to be. Some of the true part sounds almost like a\ndescription of what human life might in some respects be, if certain\nsocial movements of to-day were followed out to their logical extreme. I\nsuppose that in this likeness lies the moral of the book.\n\n\nV. K.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n     I. Nuova Appears                                                   1\n\n    II. Nuova's First Experiences                                       7\n\n   III. Nuova as Nurse                                                 16\n\n    IV. Nuova sees Some Other Things Done                              29\n\n     V. Nuova sees Bee Moth and gets acquainted with Beffa             44\n\n    VI. Nuova and Hero, and the Birth of the Princess                  60\n\n   VII. Nuova goes Outside                                             78\n\n  VIII. Nuova and Hero again, and a Battle                             93\n\n    IX. Hero and Nuova once more, and the Great Courting Chase        106\n\n     X. Nuova in the Beautiful Garden                                 115\n\n    XI. Hero finds Nuova in the Garden                                130\n\n   XII. The Happy Ending                                              142\n\n\n\n\nILLUSTRATIONS\n\n\n\n\"Nuova, I love you\"                                _Colored Frontispiece_\n\nThe beginning of a new life for Nuova                                   4\n\nIndustriously cleaning the floor                                       12\n\n\"I am so tired,\" replied poor Nuova                                    26\n\nShe would like that kind of work                                       32\n\n\"What?\" she cried. \"Well, you really are a stupid bee\"                 42\n\n\"The stupid one! The faithless one!\"                                   48\n\n\"Drones work? It isn't done, you know\"                                 62\n\nThere came slowly forth ... the new Princess                           74\n\n\"Beffa, you are sad,\" said Saggia                                      80\n\nNuova began to clean his wings                                         96\n\nNuova was among the fallen                                            104\n\nIn the Garden                                                         116\n\nBeffa settled down comfortably                                        128\n\n\"The Princess is lost!\"                                               146\n\n\n\n\nTHE NAMES OF THE BEES\n\n\nAs all the bees of this story are Italian bees, they all, except one,\nhave Italian names. And they should really be spoken as the Italians\nspeak them. Besides, they are prettier that way. Therefore, a list of\nthem, with the proper way to pronounce them, is given here.\n\n    _Nuova_ (noo-o'va)\n    _Uno_ (oo'no)\n    _Due_ (doo'ay)\n    _Tre_ (tray)\n    _Saggia_ (saj'jia)\n    _Mela_ (may'la)\n    _Cera_ (chay'ra)\n    _Fessa_ (fess'sa)\n    _Aria_ (ah'ri-a)\n    _Principessa_ (prin-chee-pess'sa)\n    _Lotta_ (lawt'ta)\n\n\n\n\n_NUOVA_\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\n_Nuova Appears_\n\n\nNuova seemed to be gradually awakening. It would have seemed that way to\nany one who could have seen her just at this moment, and it seemed that\nway to Nuova herself. It was just as if one were in a comfortable, warm\nbed, and began to be conscious of a faint light outside and of soft\nvoices and of other subdued sounds. The light and sounds grow stronger\nand louder, until, with a start, one is really awake, and sees that the\nlight is the sunlight of a beautiful morning coming in at the curtained\nwindow, and recognizes the sounds to be those of the household already\nbusy with a new day's work.\n\nIt was, indeed, an awakening for Nuova; but it was more. It was the\nbeginning of a new life for her. Until now she had been in a sort of\npollywog stage for a bee--a stage in which she had no legs nor wings,\nand in which she could do nothing for herself at all, not even as much\nas a pollywog can--and had lain all the time in a long, narrow,\nsix-walled, waxen cell that was bed and room all in one. That is, we\nmight say, she had always so far in her life been in bed.\n\nFor when she was born in her cell, she was just a tiny white thing,\nwithout wings or legs, blind, and quite helpless. Really about all she\ncould do was to squirm a little in her horizontal cell, and keep opening\nher mouth when she was hungry to let somebody know she must be fed. She\nwas immediately taken care of, however, by the nurse bees who kept near\nthe nursery cells all the time except when they had to go to the pantry\ncells for more food for the babies. This food was flower nectar and\npollen that had been brought into the hive by the active forager bees\nand stored in the pantry cells. The nurses made a sort of very good and\nnutritious jelly out of it which made Nuova grow very fast.\n\nAfter she had been fed in this way for five days, she was many times\nlarger than she had been at first. At the end of this time, however, the\nnurse bees did what might seem, at first thought, a rather heartless\nthing. They made a thin cap or cover of wax over the open mouth of\nNuova's cell, thus shutting her up tight in her bedroom. She was so\nlarge that she almost filled her cell, but there was still a little room\nleft, and this the nurses filled, just before putting the waxen cap on\nthe cell, with pollen and nectar mixed. For a few days Nuova lay quietly\nin her dark, sealed-up cell, eating, when hungry, from the lump of\npollen and nectar which lay by her side. And then she stopped eating and\nsimply lay there in a sort of trance for several days more.\n\nTo Nuova herself all her life in the cell, from first day to last, must\nhave seemed little more than a sort of dream; a confused dream of not\nbeing able to walk or fly, or see or hear, but only to squirm a little,\nand be hungry and then be fed, and to feel dimly strange growing pains\nfrom the rapidly growing legs and wings when they began to come, and of\nalways being rather comfortably warm and sleepy.\n\nBut this sleeping time had come to an end now; this helpless pollywog\nstage was finished for Nuova. And the light she saw through the big\neyes that had grown out on her head, during the last few days in the\nshut-up cell, was the faint but real light of a new day filtering its\nway through the crowded hive. And the sounds she heard by means of the\nmany tiny little hearing organs on the long, delicate, sensitive\nfeelers, or antennae, that had also grown out near her eyes and were\nconnected by fine nerves with her brain, were the humming and murmuring\nof the thousands of industrious bees of the hive who were already at\nwork at their various duties all around her.\n\nNuova's awaking, then, was much more than the mere waking-up after a\nnight's sleeping. It was the waking from a life of doing nothing but\nlying in bed and sleeping and eating and growing, to a life of taking\ncare of one's self and helping to take care of others; it was the waking\nfrom a baby life to real bee life. For Nuova was now a full-grown bee,\nwith all the wonderful body and all the wonderful instincts and the high\nintelligence that we know bees to have. But she was still shut up in her\nnursery cell.\n\n[Illustration: The beginning of a new life for Nuova]\n\nHowever, to escape from it was not difficult. She could see that the\nfaint light came in strongest through the capped end of the cell. The\nwaxen cap was the thinnest part of the walls of her room, and as Nuova's\nhead was already lying close to the cap, it was a simple and easy matter\nfor her to begin biting it away with her two strong, little, trowel-like\nteeth. In a few moments she had made a little hole in the cap, and the\nlight and sounds came in suddenly much brighter and louder than before,\nalthough the light was really not bright at all nor the sounds loud, as\nwe reckon such things. For the inside of a honeybee's house, the hive,\nis always pretty dark, and the sounds the bees make are not all loud,\nexcept occasionally when things are especially exciting and all the bees\nare buzzing together at once, or when a princess is about to come from\nher nursery cell and both she and the old queen do a lot of\nextraordinary trumpeting.\n\nBut to Nuova, biting her way out through the thin wax cap of her cell,\nhaving never heard nor seen anything at all through all of her baby\nlife, things seemed very bright and noisy indeed. This, however,\ninstead of frightening her, made her only the more anxious to get out\nand be a part of this exciting world around her, and so she worked away\nas fast as she could, until suddenly the hole was large enough for her\nto crawl out. This she did, feeling, we may imagine, rather strange at\nusing her new legs for the first time, and finding her new wings all\nfolded up and rather damp and heavy. But out she came and, with a long\nbreath or two, she started to walk over the uneven surface of the waxen\ncomb in which her nursery cell was situated. But after only a few steps\nshe felt tired and limp. Indeed she _was_ limp, for all the outer part\nof her body, that was later to be firm and strong, was still rather soft\nand damp and weak; her legs could not hold her up well yet, and her\nunexercised muscles needed a little practice to work together just\nright. So she soon stopped, trembling all over from her unwonted\nexertion, and let her big eyes gradually take in the strange sight about\nher.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\n_Nuova's First Experiences_\n\n\nIt was truly a remarkable sight. She found that she was part way up a\nvertical wall or comb of waxen cells, each of six sides and all lying\nhorizontally in the wall. This wall of cells towered far above her even\nto the very roof of the hive, and below her it stretched away down to\nthe floor. Facing it towered another similar wall of cells, and there\nwas but little more space between the two than was needed for the free\nmovement of the scores, aye, even hundreds of bees that were clambering\nabout over the opposite faces of the walls.\n\nIn each wall some of the cells were open and some capped over. In the\nopen ones were either baby bees lying on their stomachs with their heads\nnear the opening of the cells, and their mouths opening and shutting in\na most comical way, or there was some pollen or honey; or there was\nnothing at all. The cells with babies in them were those in the middle\npart of the wall, while around these were the food cells. Near the open\nnursery cells were many capped ones, and Nuova saw that some of these\ncaps were being gnawed through from the inside. She knew what that\nmeant; she had just been doing that herself. But also near the open and\nhalf-filled pollen and honey cells were other capped ones, and Nuova\nguessed, and quite rightly, that these were filled and sealed-up honey\ncells. The open pollen cells were pretty to look at because the pollen\nin them was of different colors, yellow, orange, red, etc., and they\nmade a sort of uneven but attractive color-pattern on the face of the\ngreat vertical wall.\n\nNuova was a little dizzy at first, with looking up and down the towering\nwall, and she had to hang on tightly to keep from falling. But she soon\ngrew accustomed to the great heights above and below her, and even began\nto feel quite at home in her peculiar situation. A pang of hunger came\nto her as she saw a bee walk up to an open honey cell and take a long\ndrink. She started to walk toward the same cell, when she felt a tug at\none of her wings, and heard an impatient voice, evidently addressing\nher.\n\n\"Here, wait a minute; we haven't got you clean yet; and your wings\naren't half dry. Don't be in a hurry!\"\n\nNuova was startled; remember, it was the first bee-talking, or any kind\nof talking, she had ever heard. Yet she understood it perfectly, and\nunderstood at once, too, just what was going on. For as she turned her\nhead to see who was speaking, she saw that two nurse bees were most\nindustriously cleaning her body all over, and unfolding and smoothing\nout her wings, so that they would dry rapidly, and dry all properly\nspread out. Sometimes young bees do not get their wings properly spread\nbefore they dry, and then their wings are crumpled up and useless all\nthrough their lives.\n\nNuova had, indeed, for some time rather vaguely felt this gentle\ncleaning and wing-spreading operation going on, but at first she had\nfelt so dizzy and faint, and then when she felt better had become so\nintent on looking up and down the two great walls of wax, with their\nvarious cells and the many active bees moving about over them, that she\nhad paid no attention to the gentle rubbing and pulling and stretching.\nIndeed, it was done so gently that unless she had started to walk away,\nor had accidentally looked around, she might not have known that it was\ngoing on at all. It was a performance much like that a just-born kitten\ngoes through at the hands, or rather tongue, of its mother. The pollen\nand honey, put into her cell when it was capped, had, of course, rather\nsoiled Nuova's body and much of her hair was stuck together by it. So\nlike every young bee, just come from its nursery cell, she needed a good\ncleaning. And she was getting it.\n\nWithout thinking twice about it Nuova did a very surprising thing. Or\nrather it was not surprising for a bee to do, but it would have been if\none of us, just born, as it were, and without any teaching or practice\nor chance of hearing any one else first, should do it. For we always\ncall surprising, in bees or other creatures, what would be surprising in\nus, which is a rather silly way of judging things, but one we are all\nvery much given to. As we think we are the most important kind of\ncreatures on earth--as certainly we are, to ourselves--we think our ways\nof doing things are the usual or normal or even best ways, and all\nother ways \"surprising.\" But we shall find, the more we learn about\nNuova, that bees have their own manner of life and ways of doing things,\nand one of the most important many differences between their ways and\nour ways is that they know so many things right off without any learning\nor practice or imitating of others. They are born knowing how; they do\nnot have to be taught.\n\nFor example, the surprising thing that Nuova did right away, without\nthinking twice about it, was to begin talking to the two nurse bees who\nwere cleaning her. What Nuova said, and what was said to her in return,\nis of no particular interest to us. It was simply commonplace talk, for\nNuova's coming out of her cell, her first dizziness, the high walls of\ncells, the many bees moving about, the spreading-out of Nuova's wings\nand cleaning her body, and even Nuova's ability to understand things\nabout her and to begin talking right away--all these were taken for\ngranted in the hive as the most usual things in the world, which\ntherefore needed no special exclaiming or talking about. In fact Nuova\nfelt already that, as soon as she was properly clean and dry, she must\njoin the other active bees, who were all busy with the different kinds\nof work they were doing, and begin work herself. And she felt that she\nknew just what this first work for her should be. It should be the work\nof a nurse. And the nurse bees cleaning her seemed to take this for\ngranted too. For one of them soon said:\n\n\"I think you had better begin on the other side of the comb; there are\nenough of us on this side already.\"\n\nNuova looked up and down the great comb and then to right and left. The\nnurse noted this, and added:\n\n\"You can get around by going either to the top or the bottom, or to\neither end.\"\n\nNuova thanked her, and decided to crawl down to the bottom, for she\ncould see, far down there, a number of bees moving about industriously\ncleaning the floor and some others that stood still, apparently on their\nheads, and kept their wings buzzing like mad. She was not quite sure\nwhat this performance meant; and the floor-cleaning, too, seemed a\nlittle curious. The fact is that, although bees do seem to know right\noff about things, they know these things one at a time, as it were; that\nis, when it is time for them to do a thing, they know pretty well,\nwithout any telling, how to do it, but they do not seem to know about\nother things at the same time. They seem to know things only as the time\ncomes for each special thing to be done. Nuova seemed to know that she\nshould begin working as a nurse, and to know how to do the work, for as\nsoon as she started she did just about as well as any of the nurses, but\nfloor-cleaning, and standing on one's head and fanning one's wings like\nmad, were not things she knew about yet.\n\n[Illustration: Industriously cleaning the floor]\n\nShe worked her way carefully down to the bottom of the comb and found\nherself in a very busy place indeed. There was a free place under this\ncomb and under the one opposite to it as well. When she looked under the\ncomb which she had just walked down, she saw a great, low-ceilinged\nplace stretching away in all directions, rather dim and getting darker\nthe farther away it extended, except in one direction. In this\ndirection, however, it was lighter, and the farther the distance the\nlighter it was. From this lightest part many bees were hurrying toward\nher with great loads of vari-colored pollen in their pollen baskets, or\nwith their honey sacs filled to overflowing with fresh nectar. They\nhurried on, paying no attention to any one, and disappeared one by one\nby climbing up and out of sight, except the few that climbed up the face\nof either of the combs that towered just over her. These bees she could\nstill watch, and she could see that they carried their loads far up to\nthe open food cells into which they emptied the food they had brought.\nAlso she saw other bees, without loads, hurrying along the floor toward\nthe light, and she had a wonderful thrill as she saw them, and something\nwithin her urged her to run with them toward the distant light;\nsomething inside her that sang of sunshine, blue sky, green grass and\nbushes, and many-hued fragrant flowers. But something else, even\nstronger, within her, told her not to go; that her work awaited her\nclose at hand; that she must nurse bee-babies here in the dimly lighted\nhive.\n\nSo she turned away from the alluring light with only a glance at the\nfloor-cleaners and the silly bees on their heads with their wings going\nlike mad. So strong within her had grown the feeling that there was just\none thing for her now, that she walked under the broad, lower edge of\nthe comb from whose high wall she had descended and came into the bottom\nof another high space between two other towering walls of waxen cells.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\n_Nuova as Nurse_\n\n\nWhen Nuova had come into this new high space, she looked up and realized\nthat one of its side walls was simply the other side of the comb in\nwhich her nursery cell had been, while the other was that of another\ncomb opposite it, just as she had seen that there was another comb\nopposite its other side. Nuova, seeing this, easily understood that\nprobably this was the arrangement all through the hive, and that the\nbroad and long, low, free space running through the whole hive just\nabove the floor was a space just underneath the lower edges of many\ngreat vertical combs standing side by side. Which, of course, was true.\n\nRight away, however, Nuova saw that one of the walls above her was\nincomplete; it did not reach, along its whole length, from the ceiling\nclear to the floor, but at one end, the end toward the lighter end of\nthe hive, it came down but a little way from the ceiling. Clinging to\nthis unfinished part of the wall was a great mass of bees, the upper\nones hanging to the free edge of the wall, but the ones below clinging\nto them and to each other, thus forming a festoon or curtain of bees\nhanging down from the lower edge of the incomplete wall. Many bees in\nthis living curtain were buzzing their wings violently, while others\nwere quiet, with thin sheets or plates of some shining, silver-yellowish\nsubstance forming on the under side of their bodies.\n\nBeneath the lower edge of the bee-curtain there was a broad, free space\nbeyond which the vertical wall of another more distant comb appeared. On\nthe floor in this open space were gathered many bees, most of which\nappeared to be picking up little pieces of the shining, silver-yellowish\nsubstance that had broken off from the bees in the festoon above, and\nfallen to the floor.\n\nAs this open space was lighter than the space she had come from, Nuova\ncould see everything quite clearly here, and the activity of all the\nbees and their concentration on whatever they were doing impressed her\nvery much. No one so much as spoke to her; no one spoke to any one else;\nbut every one worked away for dear life. It made her feel that she must\nget at her own work just as soon as possible.\n\nShe glanced up the part of the wall that was all finished, and saw\ntoward its middle a group of nurse bees, and a lot of open and capped\nnursery cells. She could even see, sticking out of some of the open\nones, the comical heads of the babies, each with its mouth regularly\nopening and shutting. And then she heard a song, a gentle lullaby sort\nof song. It was the nurse bees singing as they worked. This is the song\nthey sang:\n\n    We watch beside the cradles\n      When the bee-babies sleep;\n    We guard the shining pantries\n      Where the bee-milk we keep.\n\n    And when the countless tiny\n      Bee-mouths open wide,\n    We rush with drink and bee-bread\n      And drop them inside.\n\n    Our bread's the daintiest morsel\n      A wee babe could eat;\n    We knead it of soft pollen\n      And flower nectar sweet.\n\n    When ends our busy bee-day\n      The nurseries we right,\n    Then wash our countless bee-mites\n      And tuck them in tight.\n\n    Just try to feed our family,\n      And swiftly you'll see\n    That never were there nurses\n      So busy as we.\n\nSo she started to climb up to them. Just as she had gone a little way\nup, however, her attention was called to a very active and apparently\nexcited group of bees crowding about a very different sort of cell from\nthe ones that made up all the rest of the comb. This was five or six\ntimes as large as any of the others, and not six-sided, but shaped\nsomething like a pear with its small end down. It did not lie horizontal\nin the comb, but vertical, or nearly so, and had a rough, thick wall,\nand was open at its smaller, lower end. Nuova could not see what was in\nit, for she was already as high or higher than it was, as it was near\nthe lower edge of the comb, its lower end, indeed, being but a little\nway above the floor.\n\nAs she hesitated a moment, attracted by the sight of the strange cell\nand the many excited bees about it, most of whom were nurses, she heard\na bee, hurrying away from the cell, say to another hurrying toward it:\n\n\"How fast the princess is growing!\"\n\nThis did not enlighten Nuova much, but the feeling inside of her was now\nso strong that she must begin work at once that she hurried on up to the\nnursery cells lying a little way above the curious large cell without\ntrying to find out anything about it. Which shows again, of course, how\ndifferent bees are from us.\n\nWhen Nuova got to the nursery cells with their hungry babies she went\nright to work. She seemed to know just what to do; to go to the pollen\nand honey cells and drink honey and eat pollen and swallow them, but not\ntoo far, and then wait a few minutes, and then give this food up again,\nall properly mixed, through her mouth right into the open mouths of the\nhungry babies. And she knew just what babies were ready to have their\ncells capped with wax--with a nice little lump of food stored inside\nfirst, of course--and how to call some bee with a pellet of wax in its\nmouth to do the capping. She understood at once that the shining,\nsilver-yellowish plates on the bodies of the bees in the festoon at the\nend of the comb were wax, and that the pieces being picked up by other\nbees from the floor underneath the festoon were to be used for capping\ncells, and for making new cells where the vertical wall of comb was\nstill incomplete.\n\nAll these things, and whatever other new ones came up in the next few\ndays in connection with taking care of the babies, she seemed to\nunderstand right away, and indeed she seemed to know how to do all her\nwork without having to reason about it, or to observe and draw\nconclusions; in fact, without even once really having to think about it\nat all. And because it was all so simple, and so easy to understand, an\nextraordinary thing came to pass with Nuova; that is, an extraordinary\nthing for a bee. The thing was that _Nuova got tired of her work_!\n\nYes, she got tired of it; tired physically, which is not perhaps so\nextraordinary, for bees sometimes fall dead from being over-tired\nphysically; but she also got tired and impatient of the simplicity and\nmonotony of what she was doing. She got, I suppose we may fairly say,\nmentally and spiritually tired of it. Which happening marks Nuova as a\nbee of a strange and rare kind: a bee that is--is--well, all I can say\nis, a bee that is different. Other bees, if they had known of it, would\nhave called her a \"funny\" bee, or a \"peculiar\" bee; or perhaps something\nworse. Indeed, this something worse is just what she was soon called.\nFor Nuova, after a few days of this steady care of babies, one hot\nafternoon--the hive was so set in the garden that it was quite exposed\nto the sun--Nuova, I say, one hot afternoon stopped working, and crawled\nslowly down past the great pear-shaped cell clear to the lower edge of\nthe comb and there she sat and simply did nothing!\n\nPretty soon Uno, one of the nurse bees in Nuova's group, who had already\nshown herself to have a rather spiteful nature, noticed that Nuova was\nnot working, was not, indeed, to be seen anywhere about the nurse cells.\nSo she touched another nurse bee near her, named Due, with her antennae\nso as to call her attention, and said in a low voice: \"Where is Nuova?\"\n\nDue looked around, and not seeing Nuova, said: \"Why, where is she?\" Then\nboth bees touched a third nurse bee, named Tre, with their antennae. She\nturned around and joined them.\n\n\"What's the matter?\" she said. Then looking at the group of nurses, she\nadded: \"Where is Nuova?\"\n\n\"That's it,\" said Uno and Due together. \"Where is Nuova? She isn't\nhere--she has stopped working.\"\n\n\"Exactly,\" said Tre. \"I thought she would come to that--I've been\nnoticing her lately. She doesn't seem to like to work.\"\n\n\"Whoever heard of such a bee!\" exclaimed Uno and Due together.\n\n\"Let us find her,\" said Tre.\n\nSo all three started to move around over the comb looking for Nuova.\nThey made wider and wider journeys from the nursery cells, until Uno,\nwho had got down almost to the very bottom of the comb and was quite\nclose to Nuova but had not yet seen her, heard a low voice murmuring, \"I\nam so tired.\"\n\nUno turned quickly and saw Nuova. She was sitting with her head hanging\ndown on her breast, and she looked very tired and dejected. But that\naroused no sympathy in Uno, who, together with Due and Tre, had taken a\nstrong dislike to Nuova, feeling in her, some way, a rather different,\neven a rather superior sort of bee. Nuova was so unusually pretty, for\none thing. And she had such a lively interest in everything around her.\nUno, Due, and Tre, who were bees almost exactly like each other, and\nlike most other bees, felt an instinctive malice toward her, probably\nbased on a certain envy which they did not, however, even admit to\nthemselves.\n\nUno quickly called Due and Tre, and the three stared malevolently at\nNuova for a moment and then said together, speaking loudly so that the\nother bees near by could hear: \"Well, what a bee! To stop work! Just\nthink of it!\"\n\nThen Uno leaned over her and called to her: \"Lazy!\"\n\nAnd Due stepped up to her and said: \"Loafer!\"\n\nAnd Tre came up on the other side of her and hissed: \"Shirk!\"\n\nThen all three, lifting their wings to strike poor Nuova, who had sat\nvery still through all this, shrinking from the vicious bees, called\nout: \"We'll teach her!\" And then they began to strike her all over with\ntheir strong wings.\n\nIt was going pretty badly with Nuova, when an old floor-cleaner named\nSaggia stepping up to the group shouldered off the three angry nurse\nbees. Saggia had noticed at other times that Nuova went rather slowly\nback and forth between the nursery cells and the food cells, but she had\na good heart and thought it was because Nuova was sick, perhaps, for\nbees often get ill just as we do. She spoke to Nuova rather sharply, but\nstill in a kindly way.\n\n\"Nuova! what are you doing here? You mustn't stop.\"\n\n\"But I am so tired,\" replied poor Nuova. \"Thank you for driving them\naway,\" she added.\n\n[Illustration: \"I am so tired,\" replied poor Nuova]\n\n\"Tired, nonsense,\" said Saggia. \"That's nothing. Of course you are\ntired. We all are. But what difference does that make? Go back to the\nbabies, and keep on with your work.\"\n\n\"That is what they all say,\" cried Nuova, bitterly and half angrily.\n\"Here am I a full week out of my nursery cell, and I haven't had a bit\nof rest or fun yet. It is time I began to have some. Doesn't any one\never rest or have a good time?\"\n\nSaggia was painfully surprised to hear Nuova talk in this manner. She\nbegan to fear that Nuova's tiredness was not just physical tiredness.\nShe answered her therefore in a strongly reproving manner. \"Of course\nnobody rests, and of course every one has a good time. Look at them\nall,\" and she waved an antenna toward the workers at the nursery cells,\n\"don't you see what a good time they are having? It is having a good\ntime to be always working; always working for each other and for our\nchildren.\"\n\n\"But they aren't our children,\" Nuova broke in, \"yours and mine, that\nis, nor anybody's but the Queen's children. She is the mother of them\nall. And she keeps on having more. And we have to take care of them all,\nand all the time.\"\n\n\"They _are_ our children,\" Saggia interrupted, speaking very positively\nand still more reprovingly. \"They are the children of the community; the\nchildren of the race. It is our race we are working for; the children\nof the race. Think of it!\"\n\nNuova made a little face. \"Well, I am tired of the race and the race's\nchildren,\" she said. \"I want some children of my own.\"\n\nOld Saggia was dreadfully shocked by this. And she was terrified on\nNuova's account for fear some other bees might have heard her. It was,\nindeed, about as rebellious a thing as a bee can say.\n\n\"Hush, child,\" said Saggia in a whisper. \"You mustn't say such things.\nYou mustn't even think them. Other bees don't. And you must hurry back\nto your work before the others miss you.\" She helped Nuova up, and urged\nher to begin climbing back up to the nurse cells. \"If you are tired of\ntaking care of the babies you can do something else next week. You will\nbe old enough then to make wax and build cells or help clean the hive.\nAnd then in another week you can go out and gather pollen and nectar\nfrom the flowers. But go back now to the babies; the other nurses are\nlooking for you.\" She urged Nuova along again, and this time Nuova\nstarted up, but she went very reluctantly and slowly.\n\n\"No,\" she said, \"they pay no attention to me. Nobody but you pays any\nattention to me, except when I stop working. They never notice me when I\nam hard at work.\"\n\n\"Why, of course not,\" replied Saggia gently. \"Why should you be noticed\nthen? That is what we all do all the time; just keep everlastingly at\nit. That is what makes the bees such a great people. There is something\nwrong about a bee that doesn't want to work all the time; you mustn't be\ndifferent from the others. I am afraid you are sick.\"\n\nAll the time she was saying this Saggia was urging Nuova along up the\ncomb toward the nursery cells, and now they had quite reached the group\nof nurses. As Uno, Due, and Tre saw Nuova again they closed in around\nher so as to strike or pinch her. But Saggia kept them off. And Nuova\nslipped into her place again in front of a hungry baby.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\n_Nuova sees Some Other Things Done_\n\n\nJust as Nuova took her place again, however, she heard in the distance a\njoyful singing. It came from the lightest place in the hive, and looking\nin this direction Nuova saw a whole group of nectar gatherers coming\nalong together, half-dancing and turning about, and all singing together\nin the happiest way possible. This is what they sang:\n\n    Take a peep into the pail,\n      Nectar to the brim,\n    Carried over down and dale\n      Till the ways were dim.\n\n    On a dawn-ray forth we sped,\n      A thousand wings in tune,\n    By a new-born wind were led\n      Down the paths of June.\n\n    Silvery world of buzz and whirr,\n      Fragrance on the wing,\n    Sod and root and blade astir,\n      Sped our garnering.\n\n    Long in Nature's honey-room\n      We dipped and drank at will;\n    Brushed the purple lilac plume,\n      Sipped from thyme and dill.\n\n    Till when evening softly bore\n      Over dune and dell,\n    Hastened we with golden store\n      Home to Queen and cell.\n\nAnd then she heard another song, and saw a group of pollen gatherers\nfollowing the nectar gatherers. And this is what they sang:\n\n    Here's saffron dust and crimson dust,\n      And dust of rarest blue;\n    In lavish Nature's pollen mines\n      Each mines his favorite hue.\n\n    Some buzzed and burrowed all the morn\n      Within a clover hold,\n    Till fuzzy backs were powdered fine\n      And thigh-bags bulged with gold.\n\n    And some delved deep in lily cups,\n      Or hung from blossomy bells--\n    The story of their mazy flight\n      The rainbow treasure tells.\n\n    There's pollen sweet for roof and wall,\n      And more for soft bee-bread;\n    For all, from wondrous Mother-Queen\n      To bee-mite, must be fed.\n\n    Here's palest pink and lilac dust,\n      And green and brown and blue;\n    In lavish Nature's pollen fields\n      Each finds his favorite hue.\n\nThey liked their work, these foragers, that was sure, and Nuova felt\nthat she would like that kind of work too. Just then Mela, one of the\npollen gatherers, climbing up the comb where Nuova was, with her pollen\nbaskets filled by two great masses of golden yellow pollen, stopped for\na moment for breath. Nuova stretched her antenna toward Mela and touched\nher, attracting her attention.\n\n[Illustration: She would like that kind of work.]\n\n\"Oh, Mela, tell me about it,\" she said to her eagerly. \"Do you hear the\nbirds sing and see the butterflies dance out there? Mela, take me with\nyou when you go back.\"\n\nMela was very much astonished to hear a pretty young nurse bee talk to\nher this way, and she looked first sharply and then rather\ncontemptuously at Nuova.\n\n\"You upstart young thing,\" she said, \"take you out with us? Well, I\nrather think not until you have finished your nursing work. And you are\nloafing now! Well, you will do your work better in the hive or you can\nnever go out at all, that's sure.\"\n\nAnd Uno, Due, and Tre, who had overheard this conversation, buzzed at\nher one after another: \"Lazy! Loafer! Shirk!\" and they tried to strike\nher once more, but Saggia, who had not yet gone down to the floor, again\nkept them off and whispered rapidly to Nuova:\n\n\"Yes, you shall go out some time. But you must be a good bee and do your\nwork in the hive first, nurse the babies, then help make wax and build\ncells. So go on with your work now. Hurry, the soldiers are coming, and\nthey have their stings all ready for loafing bees as well as for wasps\nand black bees that come to rob us. Hurry, hurry!\"\n\nSaggia pushed Nuova back into her place, and Uno, Due, and Tre also\nhurried to their own places as the marching song of the Amazons was\nheard. Into the hive and down the long aisles between the great vertical\nwalls of comb they came marching rapidly and brandishing their long,\nsharp lances all ready for use. This was their song:\n\n    Now fierce black bee and yellow wasp\n      With cunning seek to rush the hive;\n    Up warriors, aim the poisoned dart,\n      Let no bold hornet pass alive!\n\n    Defenders of the golden stores,\n      Swoop down upon the robber band,\n    No foe escapes the Amazon spears,\n      For Hive and Queen we make our stand!\n\nAs they finished their song the files of the Amazons broke up and the\nsoldiers scattered themselves through the hive, although most of them\nkept in the lighter part near the entrance.\n\nIn the special quiet that followed the cessation of the song Nuova heard\na voice calling loudly from a group of bees near the wax-making festoon\nat the unfinished end of the comb. This group was busily engaged in\nmoulding new cells, using the wax which was being made by the bees in\nthe living festoon.\n\n\"Look here,\" called the voice, which was that of Cera, chief of the\ncell-builders and wax-makers, \"we must have more wax-makers.\" She waved\nan antenna toward the festoon. \"They can't furnish us wax fast enough.\nSome of you older nurses come here.\"\n\nNuova who had stopped working and stepped a little out from the group of\nnurses at Cera's first words, now started quickly to go over to her.\nUno, Due, and Tre all called angrily to her and tried to stop her but\nNuova easily evaded them and hurried over, with several other nurses\nfollowing, to Cera.\n\n\"Let me make wax,\" she said eagerly to Cera.\n\nCera looked at her, then away and to the others. \"You! No, you are too\nyoung,\" she said. Then more loudly to the others: \"More wax-makers, I\nsay, and right away.\"\n\nBut Nuova insisted. \"Take me,\" she urged. \"Teach me to make wax.\"\n\nCera stared at her. \"What a funny bee! Teach you! That shows you are not\nold enough. If you were you would know without any teaching. Bees don't\nhave to be taught. They simply know how to do everything they need to\nwhen the right time comes for doing it. And if they don't know it is\nbecause the right time hasn't come.\"\n\nBut Nuova still stood squarely in front of her. Cera stared at her more\nand more surprised and more and more angry. \"Here,\" she said finally,\nand very roughly, \"keep out of the way. Go back to your babies.\"\n\nNuova fluttered her wings angrily and her sensitive antennae trembled. \"I\nwon't,\" she said. \"I won't be nurse any more; I'll make wax or go out\nfor pollen. Yes, I'll go out into the garden.\"\n\nThen she actually started to run toward the hive entrance, but was\npromptly stopped by Saggia, who had noticed her altercation with Cera\nand had hurried over.\n\nCera who had only half heard Nuova's angry outburst was nevertheless\ngreatly astonished, and was about to make an indignant reply and to call\nthe attention of the other bees to the audacious little rebel, but the\ncandidates to make wax crowded about her so closely and chattered so\ndistractingly to her that all thought of Nuova was, fortunately,\nimmediately driven out of her mind.\n\nIn the meantime Nuova was tugging away from Saggia, and had even dragged\nher a little along toward the entrance. But Saggia held fast to one\nwing, and at the same time talked to her rapidly.\n\n\"Nuova, stop!\" she said in a low voice, at the same time glancing back\nto see if the crowd around Cera was noticing them. \"You mustn't say such\nthings. Bees never do. Listen, you can make wax. Listen to me, I'll tell\nyou what to do.\"\n\nNuova stopped tugging at the poor old bee, who was getting rather\nbreathless and could hardly go on with her speaking. What she had last\nsaid, however, made Nuova want to hear more.\n\nSo as Nuova stopped pulling away Saggia went on talking. \"The first\nthing the wax-makers do is to go to the pantry cells and eat all the\nhoney and pollen they can. Then they all crowd together in close rows\nlike that,\" pointing to the festoon of wax-makers, \"so as to get very\nwarm, and pretty soon the wax begins to come. It comes out in little\ndrops on your wax-plates\"--touching one of the ten curious little\nfive-sided plates on the under side of Nuova's body--\"and hardens right\naway into a thin sheet of wax on each one of the plates. Now all you\nhave to do is to keep quiet and just mix with the others when they go to\nthe food cells to eat and drink. Say nothing to any one, and nobody will\npay any attention to you, not even Cera, as long as you are busy. There,\nsee, they are going,\" she added, as the group around Cera began to break\nup, some of the bees going back to the babies while others, who had been\naccepted by Cera, moved to the open food cells and began eating pollen\ngreedily and taking long drinks of honey.\n\n\"Slip over among them,\" said Saggia in a whisper, \"and stuff yourself.\nThen go when they do to the festoon and hang on to it.\"\n\nNuova was so eager to try this new experience that she hardly paused to\nthank Saggia, although she did let a grateful smile flit over her pretty\nfresh face as she hurried away.\n\nJust as she reached the food cells she heard a gentle, rather monotonous\nsinging, and glancing in the direction of the group of cell-builders\nand wax-makers from which it came she saw that under the direction of\nCera who had already rejoined her workers, the cell-builders were going\nthrough a sort of dance or rhythmic gymnastics, moving their bodies and\nwaving their wings and legs in a sort of exaggerated imitation of\nmoulding and building, and that the wax-makers in the festoon were\nbuzzing their wings to make their bodies warmer and swinging back and\nforth, and that all of them together were singing a pretty song about\ntheir work. This is the song they sang:\n\n    Cling close in living curtain,\n      One thousand swing as one,\n    Now ooze the amber jellies--\n      The work has just begun.\n\n    Haste, mould the dainty wax flakes\n      And ply the trowels swift;\n    Pat, pat--the floors spread wider;\n      Tap, tap--the light walls lift.\n\n    Through all the long hive-twilight,\n      The patterned cell draw true;--\n    Tap, tap, with tiny trowel,\n      We've neither nail nor screw.\n\n    Ten thousand honey pantries\n      And rooms for pollen store;--\n    Build high the whole bee-city,\n      And still there's need of more.\n\nAs the song and motion dance ceased, Cera called loudly again. This time\nshe wanted cleaners to come. \"Here,\" she cried. \"Cleaners! Let a cleaner\ncome. We are getting too much dust on the floor. Cleaners! Cleaners!\"\n\nBut no one came. Cera, looking impatiently about, saw Nuova glancing up\nfrom the food cell over which she was standing, and motioned to her.\n\"Here, you,\" she said, without seeming to remember that it was with\nNuova that she had just had a dispute, \"you don't seem to be doing much.\nYou run down to those cleaners,\" pointing to several cleaners on the\nfloor near the great pear-shaped cell, \"and tell one to come here right\naway. Look lively, now.\"\n\nNuova, who seemed always ready for a new thing, gladly ran down the comb\nto the floor and danced happily across it to a bee that was busily\ncleaning and touched her with her antennae. As the cleaner looked up\nNuova said: \"Cera wants you; they are making too much dust over there.\"\n\nThe cleaner straightened up a little and without a word shuffled slowly\nacross to a place just under the festoon and began to clean the floor\nthere. Nuova started to follow her, rather dawdling along, for the\nprospect of hanging motionless in a wax-making festoon was not\nespecially attractive to her, when she was startled by the falling at\nher feet of a lump of something soft and sticky-looking. She looked up\nand saw far up on the vertical wall of the comb rising above her a bee\npeering down at her and the lump. This bee was indeed right up by the\nroof of the hive. As the bee saw Nuova look up she called to her loudly\nand rather gruffly, \"I say, pretty young bee, bring me up that lump of\npropolis, won't you?\"\n\nNuova picked up the soft brownish ball in her mouth and climbed quickly\nup to the top of the comb with it. As she offered it to the waiting bee\non the ceiling, she found it sticking to her teeth in a very\nuncomfortable way.\n\n\"Oh, the sticky stuff,\" she said in disgust, \"and how it tastes and\nsmells!\"\n\nThe bee to whom she was awkwardly trying to give it, whose name was\nFessa, and who was a crack-filler, replied disgustedly and wonderingly:\n\"Oh, the stupid bee. And it smells like what it is. And that's propolis.\nAnd when you've worked with it day and night for a week, as you will\nsometime, you will learn how to handle it, and not be sickened by its\nsmell. It has really a good healthy smell, for it comes from beautiful\ngreat pine trees and balsam firs.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" cried Nuova, \"from outdoors? From the garden where the flowers and\nbutterflies are? Shan't I go out and get you some?\" And she turned as if\nto start right away.\n\nFessa was much astonished, and as she was an irritable bee, she was\nangry too. \"What?\" she cried. \"Well, you really are a stupid bee. Go\nout? You--you silly young thing. Don't you know you can't go out until\nit is time for you to go? And then you'll have to go whether you want to\nor not. Don't you know that bees do things according to custom? You\ndon't do what you like: you like what you do. That's the bee way, you\nstupid. What kind of bee are you, anyway? Here now, hand over that\nstuff, and go back to your work.\" And Fessa took the last of the\npropolis from her very roughly.\n\n[Illustration: \"What?\" she cried, \"Well, you really are a stupid Bee\"]\n\nNuova, who did not like to be handled so roughly, and talked to so\nsharply, was almost in tears. She seemed to be always getting reproved.\nHowever, she said rather maliciously to Fessa: \"Well, do you like to\nwork with that sticky stuff? What do you do with it, anyway?\"\n\nBut Fessa had already turned back to her work and paid no attention to\nher. In fact she had already begun, with her two or three other\ncrack-filling companions, to sing a slow, \"sticky\" sort of song, as they\nkept stuffing propolis into a crack in the roof. Although I cannot give\nyou the strange, monotonous melody of the song, I can give you the\nwords. They were these:\n\n    We're the soft putty crew,\n    Dripping the oozy glue,\n    Squeezing our resins through\n      Cranny and crack.\n\n    Stuffing with pure cement\n    Crevice and chink and rent,\n    Where creeping airs have sent\n    Warning of Bee Moth bent\n      On sly attack.\n\n    Yes, we are the safety crew,\n    Spreading with trowel true\n    Fragrant and golden glue,\n      Gumming each crack.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\n_Nuova sees Bee Moth and gets acquainted with Beffa_\n\n\nAs the crack-fillers kept on singing their monotonous song over and over\nwhile they worked, and as they paid no attention whatever to Nuova, she\nturned away after a few minutes of listening to them, and stared around\nher.\n\nIt was the first time she had been clear up to the roof of the hive and\nshe saw that here, as at the bottom, there was a low, free space for the\nwhole length and breadth of the hive. It was rather dark up here, and\nvery warm and stuffy, for the warm air rising from the body of the hive\ncould not escape, as the propolis workers had filled all of the crevices\nand cracks in the roof and where the great flat roof-board rested on the\nvertical sides of the hive.\n\nNuova felt glad she was not a crack-filler, and turned to go down to the\nwax-making group where she belonged, when she saw a curious, dusky-gray\ncreature, not a bee, although with big eyes and long antennae and wings,\nwhich are all things that bees have also. But this creature's body was\nmuch slenderer than a bee's, its antennae very much longer and slenderer,\nand its wings not only longer, but covered over, as was the body, with\nmyriads of small scales and hairs. These wings were so folded that they\ncovered all the back and most of the sides of the body and trailed out\nbeyond the tip of the body. The creature was walking rapidly and\nnervously along the broad, upper edge of the comb on which Nuova stood,\nand seemed to be quite at home in the dim light of this space just under\nthe roof.\n\nNuova stared at the creature a moment, and then began to approach her.\nBut the creature had stepped quickly over the edge and was now running\nrapidly down the face of the comb. In this lighter place Nuova could see\nthat she was engaged in hiding every here and there small, white eggs\nthat she seemed to carry somewhere in her body. She would dart nervously\nin one direction and then another, hesitating a moment after each swift\nmovement long enough to drop an egg in an open cell or squeeze it into a\ncrack in the comb.\n\nNuova, not being able to catch up with the creature, called loudly to\nher a couple of times. \"Who are you? What are you doing?\" she cried; but\nthe creature did not reply, but only worked at her egg-hiding the more\nrapidly. Nuova called to her again, this time so loudly that the\nattention of several bees in the group of nurses was attracted.\n\nThe minute they saw the creature, they set up a great shouting and began\nracing after her.\n\n\"Bee Moth! Bee Moth! After her!\" they cried. \"Call the soldiers!\nAmazons! here! here!\"\n\nNuova was amazed at the uproar, and then she was shocked to see how the\nAmazons and all the bees in fact dashed at the poor Bee Moth and began\nto tear her literally to pieces. First her long antennae and then her\nwings were torn off and brandished in the air victoriously, and then her\ndelicate body was stung and hacked into bits, and the fragments tossed\ndown to the floor to be picked up and thrown out of the hive by the\ncleaners. And during all this violent scene, which horrified Nuova\nbecause, strange as it may seem, she really did not understand the\nreason for it, all the bees kept up the most excited buzzing and\nexclaiming.\n\n\"The villain!\" they cried; \"when did she get in? Has she laid any eggs?\nHow did she get in? Who saw her first? Where did she lay her eggs?\"\n\nSome began now to peer about for the eggs, while others continued to\ntalk and gesticulate.\n\nUno, who had been standing silent for a moment as if in thought,\nsuddenly spoke up loudly, while she looked significantly at Nuova.\n\n\"Nuova saw her first,\" she said; \"she called to us.\"\n\nAt that several of the bees turned to Nuova.\n\n\"Nuova, Nuova, saw her first!\" they cried. \"Did she lay any eggs? Why\ndidn't you call us sooner? _Did_ she lay any eggs, we say?\"\n\n\"Why, yes,\" Nuova answered innocently, \"a good many; all the way from up\nthere\"--indicating the top of the comb--\"clear down to--to--\" and Nuova\nshuddered so she could not finish.\n\nWith this the bees burst out into a new, violent excitement, and they\nseemed to be very angry with poor Nuova. \"Bee Moth laid a lot of eggs!\"\nthey shouted. \"Nuova saw her! Nuova let her! The stupid one! The\nfaithless one! Kill her! Kill her!\" And they crowded around Nuova in a\nmost threatening manner, some trying to strike her, and two or three\nAmazons trying to reach her with their lances. Nuova thought her fate\nwas to be that of Bee Moth's, and it really seemed so for a moment. And\nthen Saggia was heard calling loudly.\n\n[Illustration: \"The stupid one! The faithless one!\"]\n\n\"A crack! There must be a _crack_! She must have come in through a\ncrack! She couldn't have come in past the guards at the door.\"\n\nThis distracted the attention of the bees from Nuova, for at once they\nall turned toward Saggia and began shouting all together: \"A crack!\nThere's a crack somewhere! Why haven't the crack-fillers found it?\"\n\nThen they all began to crowd toward and clamor at the propolis-workers,\nwho, up on their scaffolding, scowled down on the mob, seemingly\nunafraid and unexcited.\n\n\"Well,\" said Fessa roughly, \"find the crack and we'll fill it. That's\nall we've got to say. Find the crack.\"\n\n\"Yes, that's right,\" spoke up Saggia loudly. \"Some of us hunt for the\ncrack, and some hunt for the eggs and break them or throw them out.\nEvery one that isn't found and hatches in the hive means danger for us.\nFind them all.\"\n\nAt this the bees all began hunting about for the crack and the eggs.\nEvery now and then an egg would be found and with a loud shout it would\nbe seized and thrown down to the floor of the hive. Nuova, disheveled\nand still trembling from the fright caused by the attack of the bees on\nher, crept down to the floor at the side of the hive just under the\nwax-makers, who had paid no attention to all the hubbub. From here she\nwas looking on at the search for the eggs with astonishment, when\nSaggia, who had been looking anxiously about for her, saw her and came\nover close to her.\n\n\"Go up and get back into your place in the wax-curtain, and they'll\nforget all about you,\" she whispered. \"But why didn't you shout out\nabout the Bee Moth when you first saw her?\"\n\n\"But why should I?\" answered Nuova blankly and rather bitterly. \"She was\nsuch a pretty and such an interesting creature.\"\n\nSaggia raised her antennae in astonishment and despair. \"Nuova, you _are_\na funny bee. You are so different. What _is_ the matter with you\nanyway? Don't you know--but, of course, for some extraordinary reason\nyou don't--that your 'pretty and interesting creature' is one of the\nmost dangerous enemies we have? From any of her eggs that we don't find\nand break, there will hatch a horrible little grub that will keep hidden\nin the cracks or dark places in the hive, feeding on the wax of the\ncells and on the pollen and honey, too, and spinning wherever it goes a\nterrible, sticky, silken web that catches our feet and wings and\ninterferes with our getting around easily. And if there are enough of\nthe Bee Moth's grubs they spin so much web that finally we can't carry\non our work in the hive at all, and all our babies starve and the Queen\nstarves, and the whole community goes to ruin. 'Pretty and interesting,'\nindeed; she is sneaky and despicable, that's what she is. And if you\never see another, rush for her at once and call everybody. Being pretty\ndoesn't necessarily mean being good.\"\n\n\"Yes; but, Saggia,\" said Nuova slowly, \"if her grubs have to have wax\nand pollen and honey for food, and if there is nobody but Bee Moth to\nget them for them, and she can't, of course, doesn't she rather have to\nlay her eggs in a bee-hive where, when her grubby babies hatch out,\nthere will be enough food for them? And don't they have to spin the web\nto keep us bees from killing them as soon as we see them?\"\n\nSaggia stared at her; and then, strange as it may seem, even this old\nbee began to understand a little that Nuova's mind was a bit different\nfrom that of the other bees in the hive, and that she had a heart that\ncould be hurt even by the killing of a dangerous enemy of the hive.\nHowever, Saggia contented herself with repeating, \"Well, you _are_ a\nfunny bee!\" and then she urged Nuova again to start up the comb to the\ngroup of wax-makers, and went back to see how the search for Bee Moth's\neggs was getting on.\n\nJust as Nuova was about to begin climbing up, she heard a strong,\nbuzzing sound near her and found that she was almost stumbling over a\nbee that was standing in a most odd position, with its head down and\nalmost touching the floor, and its body lifted up at an angle of forty\nor fifty degrees, and all of its wings going like mad, although it was\nnot, of course, beating its wings to fly, for it remained constantly in\nthe same position. There were two or three other bees near this one\ndoing the same thing, and farther away, nearer the hive entrance, were\ntwo or three more.\n\nThe wing-buzzing bee nearest Nuova, whose name was Aria, seemed to be\nquite vexed with Nuova, for she said to her sharply: \"Look out where you\nare going, you stupid! Are you blind and deaf?\"\n\nNuova was startled, and rather frightened, too, by the sharp speech, but\nher curiosity was even stronger than her fear. \"Good gracious!\" she\nsaid; \"what are you doing?\"\n\n\"What matter to you what I am doing?\" said Aria, in a thick, \"buzzy\"\nvoice. \"I am doing my work--which is more than you seem to be doing.\nAren't you bee enough yet to know that each of us has her own appointed\nwork and does it without worrying about what others are doing? If we all\ndo our work, then the whole community gets on all right. So if you will\nlook out for your work, I'll look out for mine.\"\n\nHere Aria buzzed more energetically than ever for a moment without\nsaying anything. Then she began speaking again, \"Still if you have to be\ntold, you pretty little stupid bee, I'll tell you that I and my\ncompanions are ventilating the hive, and if we should stop to loaf and\nmoon about like you, you and all the rest of us would suffocate, that's\nwhat you'd do.\" And she stopped talking. But in a moment she began to\nsing a curious little song which was partly made up of just buzzing and\nhumming, and partly of words. These were the words of her song, in which\nall the other ventilating bees joined:\n\n    Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz;\n    Back and forth, back and forth,\n    Fanning and stirring and driving and churning;\n    Old air we're forcing forth, new air's returning.\n        On our heads all the day;\n        This is the only way\n        We can keep sweet the hive\n        And our dear bees alive.\n\n    Whirr, whirr, whirr, whirr;\n    Roundabout, roundabout,\n    Living fans ceaselessly driving and churning;\n    Foul air we're forcing forth, fresh air's returning.\n        Upside down all the day;\n        Beating our wings away;\n        So we keep sweet the hive\n        And our dear bees alive.\n\nWhile the ventilating bees were singing and Nuova stood idly watching\nand listening to them, a small, old drone bee with crumpled-up, that is,\ndeformed wings, came, half walking and half comically hopping, down the\nlong aisle between the vertical combs from the back and darker part of\nthe hive. He was humming a song to himself as he came along. Beffa was\nthe name of the deformed bee, and he was the jester of the hive, as\ncould be guessed by his hopping way of walking, and by the words of his\nsong.\n\nWhen Nuova heard Beffa singing, she turned toward him, but did not\ninterrupt him. She was ever so much interested in his appearance, and by\nhis sort of hopping dance which he kept up all the time he was singing,\nand by the song itself, which told her something about him, but not\nenough. As he stopped singing, Nuova spoke, speaking to herself at\nfirst, and then to him.\n\n\"Oh, what a funny bee,\" she said. \"You _are_ a bee, aren't you?\"\n\nBeffa stared at her a moment, then made her a deep, mocking bow and gave\na hop or two. \"Yes, pretty one, which is, of course, to say, stupid one,\nI be a bee--just as you be, only not just so, for I be doing my work,\nwhich I don't see that you be.\" Then he hopped comically about, humming\nto himself the refrain of his song.\n\nNo one, however, paid any attention to him except Nuova, who exclaimed\nrather petulantly: \"Oh, work, work, work; always that word!\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Beffa, mockingly bowing and hopping about her, \"but not\nalways that work\"; imitating grotesquely for a moment Nuova's idle\nattitude.\n\n\"Do you call that hopping and singing work?\" indignantly exclaimed\nNuova. \"Why don't you go and nurse babies?\"\n\nBeffa, who was again at his hopping and humming, stopped a moment to\nstare at her in surprise; then replied, in a sing-song: \"I can't, oh, I\ncan't nurse babies.\"\n\n\"Then make wax,\" said Nuova.\n\n\"I can't, oh, I can't make wax,\" hummed Beffa.\n\n\"Then build a comb, or fill cracks, or clean the floor, or\"--and she\npointed to the ventilating bees near them--\"ventilate,\" persisted Nuova.\n\n\"I can't,\" sang again Beffa, \"oh, I can't build cells, or fill cracks,\nor scrub floors, or--\" and he broke off suddenly with a sort of catch in\nhis voice.\n\nBut Nuova blindly persisted. \"Well, then, why don't you go out and\ngather pollen and bring nectar; out into the sunshine, out into the\ngarden.\"\n\nThe poor, deformed bee, now angry, indeed, began jumping up and down\nviolently right in front of Nuova, and then suddenly whirled around,\nbringing his back and crumpled wings fairly in her face. \"Oh, silly\nlittle pretty, pretty little silly!\" he cried; \"which is to say, blind\none, stupid one, heartless one, _would_ I like to go out, out into the\nwarm sunshine, out into the fragrant garden! Would I like to go! Blind,\nstupid, brutal one!\"\n\nWhen Nuova saw the poor, crumpled-up, useless wings, she suddenly\nunderstood, and she felt like striking herself in the face as she\nrealized all the stupid, brutal things she had said. \"Oh, you poor, poor\nbee!\" she cried as she touched Beffa caressingly again and again with\nher antennae. \"I didn't see; I didn't understand; I am so sorry! Won't\nyou forgive me? Please?\"\n\nBeffa, though partly appeased, was still half angry, and still spoke\nbitterly. \"Oh, you _do_ understand now! You _do_ understand why I hop\nand sing; why I dance for the Queen; and why I do anything I can do when\nI can't do other things; can't do what a drone ought to do, fly wide and\nhigh in the Great Courting Chase after the Princess. I am glad you\nunderstand now. But hush, listen!\" He whirled around, facing toward the\ngreat pear-shaped cell in the lower center of the comb. \"Hark!\nPrincipessa, the new Princess, calls. Hark!\"\n\nBeffa and Nuova stood silent and expectant, facing toward the Princess's\ncell as did all the other bees. There was a tense excitement everywhere.\nNuova felt that something very important was happening. And then came a\nstrange sound, first faint and low, then louder and shriller. It was the\npiping of the young Princess shut up in her great cell, but ready now to\ncome out. It sent a shiver of excitement through all the bees.\nVentilators stopped buzzing and wax-makers and comb-builders turned\ntheir faces intently toward the sound, and even the crack-fillers, far\nup at the roof, stopped their work and peered down excitedly.\n\nThere had come, indeed, one of the most exciting and tense moments that\never come to a bee community. It was the moment that precedes the birth\nof a new royal bee, a Princess who is destined to be the new Queen of\nthe hive, or to go out from the hive with many of the workers to\nestablish a new community of her own.\n\nAgain came the shrill piping of the Princess in the royal cell. Another\nwave of excitement ran over the hive. And again and again the weird\nsound came. Suddenly the royal nurses began excitedly to plaster wax on\nthe outside of the great cell, especially over its mouth.\n\nBeffa whispered to Nuova: \"She is trying to work her way out, but they\ndon't want to let her out yet. See, the drones are coming.\"\n\nAnd even as he spoke a gay song was heard, in voices very different from\nany that Nuova had yet heard in the hive; and suddenly, as the song grew\nlouder, there came a half-dancing, half-marching file of\nsplendid-looking, robust bees, moving spiritedly directly toward the\nroyal cell. They were a fine-looking lot, these drones, these dandy\ndrones, and Nuova had a thrill she had never felt before. She gazed at\nthem entranced.\n\nThe drones made a half-circle about the cell of the Princess and lined\nup there, strutting and dancing and singing loudly. This is the song\nthey sang:\n\n    We are the courtiers, the beaux of the hive;\n      Of the dandy drones surely you've heard!\n    Our wings are a rainbow, our bodies are gold,\n      To soil them would be most absurd.\n\n    No, we never mix up with the common hive stuff,\n      Neither garner, nor plaster, nor clean;\n    'Tis superior far to be just what we are,\n      And do naught but make love to the Queen.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\n_Nuova and Hero, and the Birth of the Princess_\n\n\nAll through their song Nuova had given the drones her absorbed\nattention. She admired them greatly for their fine appearance, and when\nshe learned from their song that they did no work, but had all day only\nto follow their own sweet will, she became especially interested in\nthem. She was a little puzzled, too, for, from what she had heard from\nSaggia and the others, and from all she had seen, she had come to\nbelieve that all bees worked all the time. And here were all these\nstout-bodied, vigorous bees proudly singing that they loafed all the\ndays through. She was so much interested in this that she approached one\nend of the line of drones and spoke to the one nearest her.\n\n\"What a fine time you drones must have,\" she said. \"Don't you ever have\nto do any work?\"\n\nThe drone did not hear her at first and paid no attention to her, but as\nshe repeated her question louder and more insistently, he turned and\nstared at her amazed.\n\n\"Well, well, bless my eyes!\" he said, stammering in his amazement at\nbeing addressed by a common worker bee. \"Bless my eyes! I say, work?\nWork? Me work? Who ever heard such a question? What sort of a bee are\nyou? Who are you, anyway?\" He touched the drone next to him to call his\nattention. \"Look here, who is this bee?\"\n\nNuova was nettled by his manner and by what he said. She answered,\nrather sharply, \"Well, I'll tell you who I am. I am a bee that works;\nanyway, I am the kind of a bee that works, like all the others except\nyou, and you\" (looking defiantly at the second drone, who was staring\ninsolently at her) \"and I want to know why you do not work--you and you\nothers that loaf around all the time and eat what we bring in, and do\nnothing but sing and dance in the hive, or fly around doing nothing in\nthe garden, and keep all dressed up and just look handsome.\"\n\nThe drone was more and more astonished, but he was also a little\nflattered by her reference to his clothes and appearance.\n\n\"Well, you are a silly little bee,\" he said; \"that's what we are here\nfor. Drones work? It isn't done, you know. Our business is to love. And\nsinging and dancing and looking handsome, and not getting all dusty with\npollen and sticky with wax and dirty with cleaning, is part of it.\nThat's our work; not working, but loving.\"\n\n[Illustration: \"Drones work? It isn't done, you know.\"]\n\nNuova was so astonished by hearing this, and so excited to learn that\nsome bees did not have to work, and also so angry to think that these\nbees were allowed to live without working, while she was always being\ntold to work, and scolded for resting for even the shortest time, that\nwhen she answered him she spoke so loudly as to attract the attention of\nother bees near her, including Saggia, who was moving around near by,\ncleaning the floor.\n\n\"So that is what you call your work, is it?\" she burst out. \"Well, I am\nglad to know there is some kind of bee work besides feeding babies and\nsweating out wax and filling up cracks and scrubbing up floors. Loving,\nyou call it; well, I want to do some of that; show me how.\"\n\nThe two drones were stupefied with astonishment by Nuova's words, but\nthe one nearest her, to whom she was speaking directly, was rather taken\nby the audacity of the pretty little bee's demand, and he involuntarily\nstrutted and swaggered a little and eyed her with special attention. He\neven smiled down at her rather pleasantly, and seemed to be about to\nspeak to her again when Saggia and three or four other bees, who had\nheard her last words and were scandalized to see and hear her talking\nwith the drone, especially in such a manner, bustled up to her.\n\nThis last unheard-of behavior of Nuova was too much for Saggia. Her\npatience and sympathy with her were exhausted, and she broke out in a\ntirade of scolding.\n\n\"Well, I never in my life!\" she exclaimed, grasping Nuova and jerking\nher around; \"what in the world are you doing and saying? Talking to a\ndrone about love! You don't know anything about love. You can't know\nanything about it. Only drones and princesses know what love is, or can\nknow. You are worse than a silly bee; you are a bad bee!\" She jerked her\nagain and again; at the same time she went on with her scolding. \"Well,\nI wash my hands of you! If you can't be a sensible bee we don't want\nyou! Our thinking has all been done for us long, long ago. All we have\nto do is what custom tells us to. And if you can't behave as the rest of\nus do, you are useless. Here, take her, throw her out of the hive!\"\n\nAgain Saggia jerked her vigorously, and other bees, especially Uno, Due,\nand Tre, hustled her and struck at her. A couple of soldiers even came\nup and began jabbing at her with their lances. Poor Nuova seemed about\nto be torn piecemeal, like the Bee Moth, and turned out of the hive,\nwhen one of the drones, who was in the line some little distance from\nNuova and Saggia, was attracted by the uproar. He came over to the group\nin a lordly and leisurely manner, shouldering his way through the crowd\nand carelessly driving off the jostling bees. They left Nuova\nreluctantly, casting dark looks and making malevolent gestures toward\nher as they turned their attention again to the excitement still raging\nabout the cell of the Princess. Poor Nuova, half dead from her\nill-treatment, could hardly utter her thanks to her rescuer. In a weak\nvoice she attempted to say something, but finding it too much of an\neffort she contented herself with looking up gratefully into the face of\nthe newcomer. He looked down at her curiously.\n\n\"What is the matter with you?\" he said, not unkindly. \"Can you not do as\nother bees do? What are you--a nurse, a wax-maker, or what? Why don't\nyou stick to your work? Why don't you do what you are expected to do?\nAre you one of those dreadful creatures they call 'new bees'?\"\n\nNuova, although still weak and faint from her jostling and fright, was\nmade angry again by these questions. \"I do not know what I am,\" she\nsaid, \"but I'd rather die than be just a puppet in this hive. Is all my\nlife cut out for me, and not according to what I want to do and can do,\nbut just according to rules made by somebody I don't know anything about\nand who doesn't know anything about me?\"\n\nShe tried to say more, but a faintness came over her, and she staggered\na little and would have fallen if the drone had not unconsciously put a\nwing behind her and supported her. She looked up at him, unable to thank\nhim in words, but expressing her gratitude in her eyes.\n\nAs she rested this way, leaning heavily against him, she closed her\neyes, happy to be protected, and even feeling strange little thrills\nrunning over her body that were mysteriously enjoyable. Without opening\nher eyes she murmured: \"I am very grateful to you. You are very good.\"\nHe said nothing, but looked with more and more interest at the\nsweet-faced little bee beside him.\n\nSoon she opened her eyes again, and this time a pathetic little smile\nran over her face. Indeed, it grew to be a roguish smile as an\ninteresting idea formed more and more clearly in her brain.\n\n\"But you,\" she said--\"aren't you rather breaking bee tradition by\nhelping me? If I am a useless bee, and only in the way, and a trouble to\nthe community, shouldn't you let them sting me and throw me out of the\nhive? Are you\" (she smiled again)--\"are you, a--new bee, too?\"\n\nThe drone, whose name was Hero, and who was truly the handsomest and\nfinest drone in the hive, was first surprised and then a little\nembarrassed by what Nuova was saying. He looked rather fearfully around\nto see if other bees were observing them and tried gently to take his\nwing from behind Nuova, who, however, on realizing his intention, gave\nnew signs of weakness and leaned more heavily than ever on it. In fact,\nit must be confessed, she nestled as closely against him, enclosed by\nhis protecting wings, as she could.\n\n\"No, I am not a new bee,\" he said, rather stiffly. \"I know my duty, and\nI try to do it.\" He looked again into his companion's pretty face, and\nthen spoke more gently.\n\n\"Still, I admit that some of our ways are old-fashioned, rather absurd\nin fact,\" he said, with a manner and voice growing more and more\nconfidential. \"I have often had a curious feeling as if I should like to\nwork.\" He smiled down at her. \"Terrible, isn't it? And sometimes it is\npretty hard to work up a violent love for a Princess you never see until\nyou are just about to dash after her in the Great Courting Chase. Still,\nthat's something worth while. One such flight is excitement and exertion\nenough for a whole life.\"\n\n\"Have you ever done it?\" asked Nuova, curiously and even a little\nenviously. \"And did you win?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Hero, \"I have been in one chase. But I was so young my wings\nwere hardly dry and, of course, I didn't win, or I shouldn't be here\nnow. Don't you know that the winner always dies in the winning?\"\n\n\"Oh, how dreadful!\" cried Nuova, shocked. \"And how silly! To die just as\nyou become King. How is it worth it?\"\n\n\"What!\" said Hero, surprised, and in a reproving and even stern voice.\n\"Not worth while to win in the Great Courting Chase? To prove yourself\nthe fastest and strongest and boldest of all the drones, and to be the\nconsort of the Queen, the father of all the Queen's children? Not worth\nwhile dying for? What do I live for but that?\"\n\n\"Ah, yes,\" cried Nuova, carried away for the moment by his enthusiasm,\n\"that _is_ something to live for!\"\n\nSuddenly, however, she realized that if Hero won in the Great Chase that\nwas soon to occur--that is, would take place when the Princess, already\ntrying to get out of her cell, was really out and ready for her wedding\nflight--he would really have to die for a bee, so far unseen and\nunknown, and who had done nothing to deserve such a sacrifice, and who\nwould give her love as well to any other drone as to Hero, this handsome\nand kind new friend.\n\nThis made her angry and bitter again, and very sad, too, for she was\nbeginning to realize that she liked this beautiful, strong bee much more\nthan she liked Saggia or Beffa. He was different from all the other bees\nshe knew, and her liking for him was different. She wanted to be with\nhim all the time, and to have him talk to her or even just to look at\nher. This must be loving, she thought, or part of it, anyway. She began\nto dislike this Princess that was soon to come out of her cell. Probably\nshe would be very beautiful. When she thought of that she disliked her\nmore than ever. She could not bear to think of Hero's loving her or of\nher loving Hero.\n\nShe looked keenly at Hero, and then spoke to him slowly and cautiously,\ngrowing suddenly wise because of her new feeling for him.\n\n\"But how do you know you will love the new Princess?\" she said. \"Is she\ncertain to be beautiful and sweet? And will she certainly love you?\"\n\nHero looked at her curiously. It was strange how this pretty little bee\nattracted him. And it was strange that she seemed to have very clearly\ncertain thoughts that were already rather hazily in his own mind.\n\n\"Oh, well,\" he said musingly, \"I shall not see much of her. It is not,\nin a sense, love for her, but the response to the call of the race, the\nfulfilling of my duty to our community, that will drive me to my best\neffort to win her. But, of course, it is love for her, too; that is, so\nfar as there is love at all among bees. We can love only Princesses, you\nknow, we drones; that is honey-bee tradition.\"\n\nHero had seen no betrayal of Nuova's real feeling in her questions. He\nonly saw in them the expression of her odd, independent way of looking\nat things and thinking about them. Nuova realized this and so became\nbolder by his blindness. And she was made bitter, too, by hearing this\nhero of hers repeat that always irritating phrase of \"honey-bee\ntradition.\"\n\n\"Oh, yes,\" she exclaimed, \"you can only do what your grandfathers and\nyour great-grandfathers did! You must keep your eyes closed and your\nheart cold and loll and loaf through all your life until they tell you\nto go and love--love a Princess--love her, sight unseen--love her so\nhard that if you win her you kill yourself! You are not _you_; you are\nnot a bee with a heart and brain and strong body of your own, to live\nand strive and suffer and succeed after your own way and your own\ndesires, but you are a machine, an automaton, to do what custom has\nfashioned you to do! You are not a bee; you are a clock-work; big and\nstrong and handsome--and hollow!\"\n\nHero, amazed at her vehemence and her breaking of all bee tradition,\nlooked at her more and more interestedly. He found a responsive feeling\nin himself, not only to the ideas expressed by her words, but to her own\nattractiveness and boldness.\n\n\"Well,\" he said amazedly, but also sympathetically--\"well, you _are_ a\nsilly little bee!\"\n\nBut now the excitement around the Princess's cell broke out afresh. She\nwas evidently about to come forth. From inside her cell she piped more\nloudly and more often than ever. Suddenly a loud, answering trumpeting\nwas heard, and Beffa came hopping and humming to announce the approach\nof the old Queen. It was the Queen who was making the answering\ntrumpeting. She came majestically along toward the cell of the Princess\nwith a group of attendant bees about her. These attendants always kept\ncircling slowly, but animatedly, about her, facing toward her, and\nalthough constantly shifting and changing places, always maintaining a\ncomplete circle around her. Every now and then she gave a loud\ntrumpeting, and each time she was answered by a shrill piping from the\ncell. Or perhaps it was the old Queen who was defiantly answering the\nchallenges of the Princess.\n\nAll the bees were enormously excited. They moved about constantly,\nbuzzing and grouping in dense masses, now here, now there, but mostly\nclose to the great cell. They were, however, plainly divided in their\nfeeling, for some of the groups were intent on keeping near the Queen.\n\nAll the drones, however, clustered around the Princess's cell. Only\nHero, who still stood by the side of Nuova a little to one side, had not\njoined the group of drones which was giving all its attention to the\nawaited appearance of the Princess. None of them paid the slightest\nattention to the Queen.\n\nThe excitement steadily increased. It was evident that the climax was at\nhand. Suddenly a breathless silence succeeded the buzzing whir. All the\nbees stood still with eyes fastened on the royal cell, and there came\nslowly forth from it, with beautiful but cold, set face and slow\nautomatic movement, the new Princess.\n\n[Illustration: There came slowly forth--the new Princess]\n\nAs she stepped clear of her cell, with long, slender body erect, and\nshining delicate wings already nearly dry and straight, the whole mass\nof the bees quivered with renewed excitement. She carried a long,\nshining silver lance which she held point upward and used to support her\nfirst rather uncertain steps.\n\nThe old Queen, staring defiantly at the shining Princess, seemed to\nrealize that the end of her reign had come. But she lifted her own long\nlance threateningly in the air and gave out a challenging trumpet call\nthat sounded loud through all the hive.\n\nThe Princess, though obviously not yet in full control of her movements\nbecause of her long confinement in the cell, nevertheless faced the\nthreatening old Queen with full defiance, and piped back a vigorous\nanswer.\n\nThe Queen seemed to lose all her self-control at this, and stooping a\nlittle, and putting her lance in place so that it pointed directly at\nthe Princess, started to rush at her. But a mass of bees threw\nthemselves in front of her, blocking her way and pushing her lance up.\n\nThwarted in her intention of killing the Princess or putting her to\nflight, the old Queen hesitated a moment, and then with a loud cry of\n\"Who loves me, follow me to make a new home,\" she rushed for the opening\nof the hive followed by a great swarm of worker bees.\n\nNuova turned anxiously to Hero to see if he were going to follow the old\nQueen from the hive. Her own inclination was to go with her, for she\ndetested the haughty, cold-faced new Princess, both because of her\nappearance and insolent manner and because she felt that Hero would\nsurely win in the Great Courting Chase and hence become the Royal\nConsort of the Princess and have to die for her sake. So she timidly\ntouched him with one of her antennae to attract his attention, which was\nall being given to the stirring scene before them.\n\n\"Are you going to follow the old Queen?\" she asked, \"or stay with the\nPrincess?\"\n\nHero started, as she spoke, as if awakened from a daze. He looked down\nat her curiously, as if only half recognizing her. Then he turned again\nto look intently at the Princess and the group of drones about her. With\na quick turn back to Nuova he answered her as if astonished by her\nquestion:\n\n\"I shall stay with the Princess of course.\" Then he straightened up\nproudly and added: \"Indeed, I think she will be my Princess; my Queen.\"\n\nHe looked toward the Princess again, this time eagerly and bending\nrather toward her as if impatient to go to her. And even as he looked\ntoward her, her eyes, moving slowly and proudly over the whole group of\nbees who had elected to remain in the hive with her, rested on him, and\nstopped there. As she saw the handsome drone bending toward her with his\neager eyes fixed on her, a slow smile came over her face. It was the\nfirst appearance of anything but defiance or cold insolence to which she\nhad yet given expression. Both Hero and Nuova saw it. Poor Nuova! It was\ntoo much for her. She could hardly stand. Hero felt her trembling at his\nside. He turned his face to look down at her, and was astonished and\nthen suddenly touched and even moved to see in her wet eyes the revealed\nlove of this pretty little worker bee for him.\n\nHe spoke to her half curiously, half tenderly. \"And are you going with\nthe old Queen, or will you stay here with the Princess?\" he asked.\n\n\"Stay, stay,\" whispered Nuova, almost sobbing. \"I think--she will\nbe--my--Queen, also.\"\n\nAs she said this she turned away. Just then the old Queen and the swarm\nof bees about her rushed from the hive. All the bees remaining began to\nsing a loud song of gladness and welcome to the Princess who was to be\ntheir new Queen. And they all joined in a mad dance of joy--except\nNuova, who hid her tear-stained face and limp body behind the nearest\ngreat honeycomb.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\n_Nuova goes Outside_\n\n\nWhen Nuova felt that she could face again the scene near the cell, she\nleft her hiding-place and came slowly out into the open space where she\nhad left Hero. He was gone. She knew, without looking, that he was now\nwith the other drones pressing about the cold, proud Princess. She\nlooked rather for her old friends Saggia and Beffa. Though Saggia had\nlost all patience with her because she had spoken to the drones, and had\npunished her, and even given her over to Uno, Due, Tre, and the other\nbees who disliked her, she still liked Saggia and believed that Saggia\nliked her.\n\nSo she looked around for them. But they were not in the mass about the\nPrincess nor in any of the groups which were beginning to take up again\nthe different kinds of work of the hive.\n\nNuova noticed some bees going in and out the entrance hole of the hive,\nand although she knew, by instinct, that she was still too young to\nleave the hive, yet that strange driving spirit in her, which was\nalways impelling her to do things against bee traditions and custom,\nurged her to the bright opening. Once there she hesitated. The brilliant\nsunshine outside was blinding to her eyes, accustomed so far only to the\nhalf-light of the hive. She had a curious sensation too, half of fear of\nthis unknown world outside, half of fascination to plunge recklessly\ninto it to see and learn the new things there must be in it, and to\nescape from the automatic, heartless life of the hive, and the latest\nand bitterest unhappiness this life had just brought to her.\n\nAs she stood, uncertain, at the edge of the opening, she heard a\nfamiliar humming just outside the opening, and at once stepped out. She\nfound herself on a broad platform as wide as the hive and extending\nforward for what seemed to her a long distance, but which was in reality\nonly a few inches. On either side of the platform and beyond it were\ngrass and flowers and bushes, and still farther away some great trees,\nall new and wonderful things to her. Above was the blue sky, and she\nheard birds twittering, and far away the song of a woman working in the\ngarden. And it was all very light and fresh and fragrant. Nuova liked\nit.\n\nShe heard the familiar humming again. She turned her attention to the\nentrance platform. There were only a few bees on it. A few guards moved\neasily and half-lazily around, and a few foraging bees were coming and\ngoing with loads of pollen and honey or with pollen baskets and honey\nsacs empty. But suddenly she saw Beffa. It was he who was making the\nfamiliar humming. With tired, drawn face and with only grimaces for\nsmiles, he was slowly hopping and humming near the front edge of the\nplatform. He often came to a standstill to look with fixed gaze out into\nthe distance. Beffa was a sad bee, for his Queen had gone and he could\nnot follow her. Poor Beffa! It made Nuova sad, too, to see him.\n\nAnd then she saw Saggia, too. She was at one side of the platform with\ndustpan and brush, and occasionally stooping over to brush up something.\nShe, too, seemed sad and tired. She looked older than Nuova had seen her\nlook before. Saggia, like Beffa, every now and then stood quite still\nand gazed far away into the garden or sky as if hoping to see again\nthe old Queen whom they had lost. Saggia and Beffa had come close\ntogether without noticing each other or Nuova, so occupied with their\nown thoughts were they. But soon Saggia noticed Beffa and moved up close\nto him.\n\n\"Beffa, you are sad,\" said Saggia, in a low voice so that only Beffa\nshould hear.\n\n[Illustration: \"Beffa, you are sad,\" said Saggia]\n\nEven Beffa did not hear her at first, or, at least, he did not heed her.\nBut when Saggia repeated what she had said, Beffa came out of his\nreverie with a jerk, and awkwardly made a little hop and grimace.\n\n\"Sad,\" said he. \"Great Apis forfend. Haven't we a shining new Princess\nto our hive; a virgin new Princess to wed and be a new Queen to us all?\nWhy should we mourn for an old Queen that's gone? Why be sad with a new\nQueen to come? Ha-ha,\" he laughed sardonically and bitterly.\n\n\"Yes, sad,\" repeated Saggia again, still speaking low and significantly,\n\"when we have just lost our old Queen who liked her jester, Beffa, and\neven her old floor-cleaner, Saggia, who neither of them know whether\nthe new Queen will like them or not. Oh, sad, sad! Ha-ha!\" And she\nhalf-imitated Beffa's sardonic laugh and his hop and grimace.\n\nBeffa turned and faced Saggia squarely, surprised to find wise old\nSaggia troubled and depressed just as he was. After a long, keen look at\nher, he made a solemn gesture to the distance, and then a mocking bow\ntoward the hive entrance.\n\n\"The Queen has passed: long live the Queen!\" he exclaimed.\n\nSeveral of the guard and forager bees near him heard his cry and called\nout after him--\n\n\"The Queen has passed: long live the Queen!\"\n\nBut one old guard of testy temper added, speaking rather roughly to\nBeffa: \"What are you doing here? Doesn't the Princess laugh at your old\ntricks? Can't you find some new ones?\"\n\nBeffa turned angrily toward the guard, as if to answer sharply, but\nsuddenly checked himself and began capering and humming. Then he sang in\na bitter voice:\n\n    \"Let the guards guard, and the jester jest,\n    Let Saggia clean, and the new queen wed,\n      Let all the bees do all they did,\n      For life is doing what we're bid.\n      Oh, life is doing what we're bid.\n                   Ha-ha!\"\n\nSaggia felt a little anxious on Beffa's account, for his song seemed\nbitter, and she saw that the guard was looking both puzzled and sour as\nshe listened to it. So Saggia spoke to her hurriedly.\n\n\"The odor from our full pantries comes strong from the hives this\nmorning,\" she said. \"I hope it won't attract the Black Bees.\"\n\n\"Oh, the Black Bees,\" said the guard, superiorly. \"Let them come. We'll\nshow them how robbers are treated.\"\n\nJust as the guard finished speaking, a commotion began on the other side\nof the platform, and Nuova saw a large black-and-yellow-striped creature\nwith a long spear lunging fiercely toward the entrance of the hive. It\nwas a Yellow Jacket. She knew it at once, because she had heard some of\nthe nurse bees one day talking about these fierce\nblack-and-yellow-banded robbers that sometimes fought their way into\nthe hive to steal honey.\n\nThe guard near Saggia and Beffa hurried across the platform brandishing\nher lance. But already three or four other guards had thrown themselves\non the intruder and were beating it back, striking it viciously with\ntheir lances. The Yellow Jacket made a good fight, but the bee Amazons\nwere too many for it. It was wounded, began to weaken, and soon was\nhustled back off the platform and on through the grass behind a near-by\nbush.\n\nThe guard who had been talking with Saggia came back proudly to her,\nstill brandishing her long lance.\n\n\"That's the way we do it,\" she said. \"And a Yellow Jacket is stronger\nthan a Black Bee.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" replied Saggia, wagging her old head wisely, \"but not stronger\nthan ten Black Bees, or a hundred, and that is the way _they_ come.\"\n\nAs Saggia finished speaking, the guards who had driven the Yellow Jacket\naway returned boisterously, and joining all the other guards on the\nplatform, formed in a line, and half-marching, half-dancing, went\nthrough some military maneuvers. While they were doing this, another lot\nof guards came out of the hive, and forming in a line opposite them,\nalso went through the martial dance. At the end of it all the guards who\nhad been outside marched into the hive, while the new ones remained\noutside on the platform. It was the \"relief of the guard.\"\n\nAll during the guards' dancing and marching, Nuova had stood still\nwatching them intently. Neither Saggia nor Beffa had seen her yet. And\nshe was afraid to speak to them for fear of being made to go back into\nthe hive again. She had made up her mind to stay outside. It was all so\nmuch more beautiful and exciting out here. She had decided that she\nwould not be a nurse or wax-maker or anything else inside the hive any\nlonger. She wanted to be a forager and be free to go in and out as she\nliked, and to fly far out into the garden and spend long, sunshiny hours\nthere.\n\nJust then, however, Saggia caught sight of her. It was, indeed, Beffa\nwho saw her first. He quietly touched Saggia with one of his antennae and\nwaved the other in Nuova's direction. Saggia hurried over to her,\nlooking anxiously around her to see if any other bees had noticed Nuova.\n\n\"What are you doing out here?\" whispered Saggia to her as she reached\nher side. \"Who sent you out? It isn't time for a week yet for you to\ncome outside.\"\n\nSaggia wanted to be angry with her, but the sight of Nuova, so sad and\nforlorn-looking, and with tear-marks still on her face, was too much for\nher kind heart. And she really loved Nuova very much. Indeed, all that\nNuova had done, and what she had said, had made a strange appeal to the\nwise old bee. She was almost frightened sometimes to feel that down deep\nin her heart she not only sympathized with much of Nuova's revolt\nagainst the rigid traditions and automatic life of the bees, but that\nshe realized that this stifling of all independent action and all\npersonal emotions was not always the way to the highest happiness nor\neven the wisest conduct for the bees. She shuddered to think that\nperhaps she, too, was a \"new bee.\"\n\nNuova was half-frightened by Saggia's discovery of her and by her hard\nwords. But she answered her willfully and defiantly, although with a\ntouch of attractive mischievousness.\n\n\"Nobody sent me out,\" she said. \"I have just decided to be a forager;\nthat's all. While I was in the hive a little while ago a forager came in\nwith two great loads of pollen in her pollen baskets. She was very tired\nand seemed sick. While she was looking around for an empty cell in which\nto put her pollen, she suddenly sank down--and--and died.\"\n\nNuova shivered as she said this, and dropped her antennae down over her\neyes for a moment.\n\n\"Ah, yes,\" said Saggia sadly but proudly; \"worked herself to death. That\nis the noble death we have. We die in the harness--working for others,\nworking for the hive. The bees know that death well and honor it.\"\n\n\"They may know it well,\" broke in Nuova sharply, \"but they do not honor\nit well. Anyway, not by their actions. Nobody paid any attention to the\npoor forager when she was staggering along with her load, and none when\nshe sank down on the floor and died. Except pretty soon a couple of\ncleaners came along and dragged her body away. I suppose they brought\nit out here and flung it off the platform somewhere. A noble death, well\nhonored, indeed! Well, I don't want that kind. I am going to die out in\nthe garden, under a flower.\"\n\nWhile Nuova was speaking, Beffa had hopped and hummed his way over to\nthem, and now he broke in with a song, which he sang as he hopped and\ndanced about them. This is what he sang:\n\n    \"Work, no play; work all day;\n    A useful life; a usual life;\n    The good bee's way,\n    All day, all day.\n    Then die and lie\n    Till Saggia spy\n    The carrion stuff--\n    A tug; a shove,\n    And the friend you love\n    Is gone to grass:\n    Ha, ha, alas, is gone to grass.\n    A noble life; a halted breath:\n    The epitaph: 'She worked to death.'\"\n\nBoth Saggia and Nuova listened to Beffa and watched him till he had\nfinished singing. They both saw clearly his own unhappiness and his own\nrevolt against the rigor of the bee tradition that demands always the\nfull sacrifice of the individual for the community. Saggia realized that\nBeffa, too, was a \"new bee.\"\n\nNuova, in the meanwhile, was looking off again into the beautiful\ngarden; at the green grass and bushes; the many-colored flowers; the\nblue sky and warm, bright sunshine over all. She was enchanted. She drew\na long breath of relief and happiness. She turned to Saggia.\n\n\"Will they keep me in,\" she whispered, \"if I go back into the hive? If\nthey will, I shan't go,\" she added positively.\n\nSaggia looked about again to see if other bees were paying attention to\nthem. None was.\n\n\"No,\" she said, speaking in a low voice, \"they won't keep you. They\nwon't pay any attention to you as long as you keep busy, coming and\ngoing. You can be a honey-gatherer. The honey-flowers are only a little\nway off, there in the garden. But first you must get acquainted with the\noutside of the hive and the entrance. Look around. See, we are just by\nthe side of this big bush, with that long branch hanging over. You can\ngo out a little way from the platform, then turn around and see how the\nhive looks from there. Then go a little farther and look back again.\nThen go a little way to one side, and then to the other, and notice\neverything that will help you to find your way back. If you get lost,\nsee if you can't see other honey-gatherers or pollen-foragers flying\nwith full loads; they are returning to the hive; follow them. As to\ncollecting the honey, you will learn that easily; in fact, you will be\nsurprised when you get to the flowers, to find that you already know\nhow. Be careful and not get into the poppies that shut up on you, and\nwatch always for the great-crested bee-bird that swoops down on you,\nand, peck\"--Saggia exaggeratedly imitated a bird's pecking--\"and that is\nthe end. Now, be off for your first flight. But not too far--not for the\nfirst time.\"\n\nNuova's face shone with eagerness. \"Oh, thank you, Saggia, thank you.\nYou are good to me. You are different from the others. Thank you,\ndearest Saggia.\"\n\nNuova started quickly forward toward the edge of the platform. Just then\nBeffa, who had been hopping gently about Nuova and Saggia while they\nwere talking, now hopped and danced along in front of Nuova, singing:\n\n    \"The new bee and the old world;\n    Flowers are there and butterflies;\n    But ugly toads and big bee-birds,\n    If the old bee thinks she knows,\n    The new bee knows she doesn't.\n    Ah, new bee knows the world-old truth,\n    That the old world's ever new.\"\n\nNuova had slowed her steps so that she could hear all of Beffa's little\nsong, and as he finished she came up to him and touched him caressingly\nwith one of her antennae. But Beffa shrank from her caress. It meant so\nmuch to him, and yet he knew it meant so little to her. He knew Nuova\nliked him; yes, but he knew that he more than liked Nuova: he loved her.\nPoor Beffa! Love! A pitiful, deformed drone that could not fly; that\ncould never be in the Great Courting Chase! And it was only then that\nthe drones loved; and then only a Princess that could be loved. What he\nfelt was impossible for a bee to feel; bee tradition told him that; and\nyet, he knew that he did feel this impossible thing.\n\n\"Beffa, you are good to me too,\" said Nuova to him; \"you and Saggia are\nboth good to me. And you two are the wisest bees in the hive, for you\nknow that I am not the same as the other bees. No bees are exactly the\nsame, I believe. We can't be all exactly alike, and we can't all like\nthe same things, or think the same way, can we? I wish I could be a\nQueen so that I could have you always for my jester; always by to say\nfunny things and wise things.\"\n\nBeffa made a grimace--to hide a sob. And he hopped more grotesquely than\never, while he sang:\n\n    \"Ah, well, who knows?\n    New things unheard of may be true,\n    For every day the world is new.\n    Ah, well, who knows?\n    Ah, well, who knows?\"\n\n\"Good-bye, Beffa,\" said Nuova. And she stepped to the edge of the\nplatform, and spread her wings for her first flight, her first plunge\ninto the outside world of grass and flowers and butterflies and\nbee-birds. And just then something happened that postponed this flight.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\n_Nuova and Hero again, and a Battle_\n\n\nJust as Nuova was about to launch herself into the air, a sudden\ncommotion at the hive opening made her look back. After this look she\nhad no further thought of the garden. What she saw was the group of\ndrones coming out of the hive, with another group of worker bees\nattendant upon them. These attendants were cleaning the drones' bodies\nand wings and evidently preparing them for some great event. It was\nplain to Nuova that this was the preparation for the Great Courting\nChase. Her heart gave a leap, her eyes became misty; she stumbled and\nalmost fell. She was so dizzy that she thought sudden death had struck\nher. It was only, however, the blow of her heart and mind in realizing\nthat Hero--her Hero--must be in the group and preparing to leave her\nforever. He had, in a sense, already left her forever she knew, for he\nhad made his decision--or rather she felt that the cruel bee tradition\nhad made the decision for him--to follow the Princess. And if he\nfollowed her he could but win. Her wonderful, handsome, powerful Hero\nwould be easily the successful one in the Great Courting Chase.\n\nShe ran her eyes anxiously over the group of drones now well out of the\nentrance and spreading out on the platform. At first she did not see\nHero. But in a moment she did. He was a little apart from the others,\nand showed none of the excitement of the other drones. Indeed, he seemed\nto be rather depressed, and was evidently keeping quite by himself. He\nhad not even an attendant with him. Nuova saw in this her chance.\n\nShe turned back from the edge of the platform, merged into the excited\ncrowd, none of the bees paying any attention to her at all, and began to\nwork her way through the press toward Hero.\n\nJust then, however, Uno appeared by his side and began to brush his\nwings. He turned on her with an impatient gesture. Surprised and angry,\nUno made a grimace and left him. A moment later, Due, noticing that he\nhad no helper, hurried over to him, but she, also, much to her surprise\nand chagrin, was treated as Uno had been.\n\nHero seemed to be in an irritable mood. As the drones and their\nattendants came farther out, he moved away toward the front of the\nplatform. This brought him rather near Nuova, who was able to reach him\nbefore any other bee could offer him her services.\n\nNuova, unperceived by Hero, slipped behind him and began nervously and\nawkwardly, glancing at the attendants on the other drones for guidance,\nto clean his wings. Soon an awkward tug apprised Hero that some one was\nagain trying to attend him, and he turned with an angry movement to\ndrive her off, when he recognized Nuova, and arrested his gesture. He\nstood still, looking at her keenly, and, without a word, let her go on\ncaring for him. She grew even more nervous and awkward. Then he smiled\ngently, and spoke to her in a low voice.\n\n[Illustration: Nuova began to clean his wings]\n\n\"How do you come to be out here?\" he asked. \"You weren't sent as an\nattendant to us. Only the older and more experienced bees are given\nthat--honor.\" He smiled again. \"You didn't come out just now?\"\n\n\"No,\" said Nuova almost in a whisper--\"no, I was going out for honey.\"\n\n\"Oh, fine!\" said Hero. \"Out into the world already! You must have done\nyour work in the hive very well.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" murmured Nuova demurely.\n\nJust then two or three Black Bees slipped out from behind a bush near\nthe platform, but no one noticed them.\n\n\"But why don't you go, then?\" asked Hero. \"It is beautiful over there\namong the flowers.\" He waved an antenna toward the garden. \"And\nfragrant, and exciting. Other kinds of creatures; beetles and\ngrasshoppers and big buzzing flies. Some bad ones, too; spiders and\ngiant bee-birds always watching, watching to catch you.\" Nuova\nshuddered. \"But you are not afraid, are you?\" Hero looked at her keenly.\n\"Or are you? Do you prefer to stay here in safety and just wait on the\ndrones?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Nuova slowly, \"I prefer to wait on a drone.\"\n\n\"I am surprised,\" said Hero sternly and even half-contemptuously.\n\nJust then Nuova made an awkward tug at his wing. He winced. \"Ouch!\" he\nsaid; then half-laughed. \"Your champion will never win Principessa if\nyou pull his wings out.\"\n\nAs he said this, Nuova involuntarily, in response to her feelings, gave\nan even harder tug at his wings.\n\nHero exclaimed again, and half-pulled away from her. He spoke almost\nangrily.\n\n\"Here, what _are_ you doing?\" he cried. Then, as he looked into the\neager, excited, pretty face of his little attendant, he felt his heart\ngive a curious throb. And when he spoke again it was almost tenderly.\n\n\"Well, you are good to try and help me, anyway. But\"--and now he spoke\nrather moodily--\"I don't need much preparing. I can beat any of\nthem\"--and he waved contemptuously toward the other drones--\"easily,\njust as I am.\"\n\nPoor Nuova! He could hardly have said a more discouraging thing to her,\nor one to hurt her more. She drew back a little and had hard work not\nto cry. She half-sobbed as she said: \"That--is--fine. I am sure--you\ncan.\" She paused. Then she said slowly: \"And if you do beat them, are\nyou sure to get--her? Are you sure to be able to catch--her?\"\n\nThe excitement on the platform was growing. The drones seemed to be\ngetting impatient, and the attendants worked feverishly at the cleaning\nand making ready for the wonderful event about to happen. The infection\nof all this excitement began to seize Hero. He had turned his face away\nfrom Nuova to stare intently at the opening of the hive. It was there,\nof course, that the Princess would soon appear.\n\nAt Nuova's last question he started a little. \"Eh?\" he said rather\nbrusquely. \"Oh, yes, of course, I can catch her. She will fly faster\nthan we at first, but she can't keep it up as long as we can. She will\ntry to go higher and higher in the air, but that is hard work. That is\nwhen we shall catch up with her.\" He paused, then added, musingly: \"It\nis odd; she is trying her best to get away from us and yet she wants to\nget caught all the time. She must get caught, you know, or we shouldn't\nhave any Queen, and the hive would go all to pieces. The old Queen never\ncomes back, of course. The Princess is our one chance to have a Queen at\nall.\"\n\nNuova seemed to be thinking hard. Something was puzzling her. \"But,\" she\nasked insistently, \"what really does happen if a Princess doesn't get\ncaught, or something happens to her. There must be some way to save the\ncommunity, isn't there?\"\n\nHero seemed to have lost interest again in Nuova and her questionings.\nHe was gazing fixedly at the hive entrance.\n\n\"Oh,\" he said carelessly, \"I don't know. I've heard sometimes that a\nworker bee can--\"\n\nHe was suddenly interrupted. There was a new and very violent commotion\non that side of the platform which the few Black Bees had approached,\nunnoticed, a few minutes before. Now there was a whole group of them\nplainly in sight and many others were coming quickly out from behind the\nbush. A great and angry buzzing was heard from the guards on the\nplatform and cries of \"Lotta, Lotta! The Amazons! Call Lotta! Call the\nAmazons! Hurry! The Black Bees! The Black Bees!\"\n\nThe guards, few as they were in comparison with the oncoming horde of\nBlack Bees, threw themselves bravely at them, and a moment after Lotta\nand her Amazons began issuing pell-mell from the hive entrance. They\nwere met almost immediately by the foremost Black Bees, who had easily\nkilled or were driving back the few guards, and were making rapid\nheadway over the platform toward the entrance. A few even had passed in\nthrough the entrance, but they were driven out again at once by the\nissuing Amazons. In fact, most of the first Black Bees to gain a\nfoothold on the platform and to push forward to the entrance or into it\nwere killed. But that brought no terror to the others. They pressed on\nover the dead bodies of their comrades, lunging and striking viciously\nwith their long lances.\n\nBut Lotta and the Amazons were fighting fiercely, too. They were making\na heroic defense of the hive and its stores. The battle raged with great\nfury, but for a little while with no apparent advantage to either side.\nThe Black Bees seemed, on the whole, the more expert and the more\nfurious fighters--they are, indeed, a race of bees famous for their\nfighting--but Lotta's wonderful personal courage and deeds of prowess\nwere a great inspiration to the defenders. She appeared to be everywhere\nat once, and her shouts of defiance to the enemy and of encouragement to\nher followers made up in some measure for the feebler strength and less\nexperience of her band.\n\nThis was so obvious to the Black Bees that she was soon singled out for\nspecial attack by groups of her adversaries. Two or three Black Bees\nwould combine to assail her from different sides, but her lightning\nmovements and dashing bravery had so far saved her even from being\ntouched by an enemy's lance. But just at the moment when Nuova had\nrecovered a little from her amazement and terror at this sudden\ninvasion, Lotta received her first wound. The fierce Black Bees were\nclosing around her too closely. Nuova felt a violent rage rising within\nher as she realized that at any cost the Black Bees were going to kill\nthe leader of the Amazons. Lotta was staggering, and a half-dozen lances\nwere lunging at her. She stumbled, gave one final shout of\ndefiance--and fell.\n\nIt was a terrible blow to the Amber Amazons. They were seized with\ndismay. They had no one to lead them. They hesitated, gave way here and\nthere, and the Black Bees with triumphant shouts pressed forward. Some\nof them had even reached the entrance, when a new, shrill battle-cry and\ncall of encouragement to the Amber fighters rose above all the noise of\nthe battle.\n\nThe cry came from Nuova. She had watched the whole terrible struggle in\na sort of daze; half of terror, half of utter amazement. But when Lotta\nwas struck down, the rage rising within her seized her completely, and\nwhen the Black Bees had pressed on over the fallen leader's body with\nshouts of triumph, she sprang forward, grasped Lotta's own lance from\nher sinking hand, and threw herself with such fury on the rear of the\nmarauders that they had to turn to defend themselves. Then it was that\nshe had uttered her first battle-cry. As the Amber bees heard it and saw\nat the same time that some of the black fighters had turned to defend\nthemselves against an attack in the rear, they checked their retreat\nand began answering back this new shrill call. In the next moment they\nsaw something that filled them all with rejoicing and gave them at once\na new courage.\n\nNuova, taking a lesson from the method of the attackers, had looked\nabout, even as she leaped into the fight, for the leader of the Blacks,\nand had fought her way fiercely directly toward her. In a moment they\nwere face to face, and in another moment thrusting and parrying in\ndeadly personal combat.\n\nBut nothing could withstand the vigor and audacity of this rage-maddened\nnew warrior's assault, and the black leader, first contemptuous, then\namazed, then terrified, found herself fighting vainly for her life. She\nmanaged to strike Nuova one or two glancing blows with her lance, but\nfor answer received a thrust fairly through the body, and fell with a\ngreat cry of defeat and pain.\n\nThis it was that filled the despairing Amber bees with a new courage and\nreanimated them to fresh resistance. Turning on their attackers, they\nrenewed the battle with an irresistible surge toward Nuova, and reaching\nher and following her lead in but few moments more they had rushed the\ndisheartened Black Bees off of the platform. They even followed them\ninto the grass, where they killed many of them one by one. Then they\nhurried back with shouts of victory, and ranged themselves in lines for\nmarching and dancing. While the foragers busied themselves with carrying\nthe bodies of the fallen off of the platform, all the Amazons marched\nand danced and sang loud songs of triumph.\n\n[Illustration: Nuova was among the fallen]\n\nBut Nuova was not among them. She was among the fallen. Not far from the\nbody of the dead leader of the Black Bees whom she had so brilliantly\novercome, Nuova lay huddled. Saggia, who had been hustled out of the\npress and into the entrance of the hive while the battle was going on,\nnow hurried to her fallen friend. Beffa, also, came hopping anxiously to\nher, and Hero, who knew now that Nuova was no coward, and had, indeed,\nbeen seized with a great admiration and at the same time a great\nsolicitude for his extraordinary little worker-bee friend, also hastened\nto her side and bent over her. Other bees, too, came crowding around,\nand Nuova's body would almost have been trampled under foot by the\nsurging crowd if Hero had not angrily cleared a little space about her.\nSaggia, who had found already to her great joy that Nuova showed no\nlance wound, but had only been stunned by a glancing blow, was lifting\nher gently to her feet. And just as Hero came to her side, Nuova, dazed\nand faint, first opened her eyes.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\n_Hero and Nuova once more, and the Great Courting Chase_\n\n\n\"My brave little Nuova,\" said Saggia, joyfully and tenderly. And Beffa\nhopped happily about, singing softly to her:\n\n    \"For a new bee\n    A new way;\n    From nurse to warrior\n    All in a day.\n    What's for to-morrow?\n    Who can say?\n    For the newest bee,\n    The newest way.\"\n\nThe other bees about her were all talking confusedly together. \"She\nsaved our stores! Who is she?\" they cried. \"She is Nuova, the nurse!\nNuova, the wax-maker! She is Nuova, the honey-gatherer! She was not even\nan Amazon! Is she hurt? She is killed! She is wounded! What a brave\nbee!\"\n\nHero had said nothing yet, but now, as he leaned over her with his face\nclose to hers and her eyes opened slowly, he murmured tenderly, \"Little\nNuova!\"\n\nNuova looked languidly up at him and around at Saggia and Beffa; then\nclosed her eyes again with a weak but happy smile, and spoke in a low,\ntrembling voice: \"She struck me, but I hit her back; I hit her harder.\"\n\n\"You killed her, Nuova,\" broke in Hero, proudly. \"You were wonderful.\"\n\nNuova shuddered. \"Killed her!\" she said sadly. \"Dreadful! I am sorry.\"\n\n\"Sorry?\" cried Saggia. \"You silly! You saved us! You won the victory by\nkilling her!\"\n\n\"Who was she?\" asked Nuova, still sadly.\n\n\"Why, the Chief of the Black Bees,\" said Hero, proudly and tenderly.\n\"Their greatest fighter! And you, little Nuova, alone, killed her.\"\n\nNuova looked up at him thoughtfully. \"Are you glad?\" she asked.\n\nHero turned with stupefaction to Saggia. She could only lift her hands\nin amazement. Nuova's mental processes were too much for them, although\nBeffa, hopping near, nodded his head wisely to himself.\n\n\"Glad? I glad? Of course, you absurd warrior!\" said Hero. \"We are all\nglad, aren't we?\" he asked of the others about.\n\n\"Glad? Of course, we are glad! You saved us!\" said they all.\n\n\"Well,\" said Nuova, smiling gently, and looking up at Hero, \"if you are\nglad, I am glad.\" And then she let her head sink down again and closed\nher eyes.\n\nWhile Saggia and Beffa and Hero had been caring for Nuova and talking to\nher, most of the other bees had gradually resumed their normal\noccupations, the guards moving watchfully about over the platform, the\nforagers coming and going, and two or three cleaners scrubbing the floor\nhere and there to remove all stains of the battle.\n\nBut Uno, Due, and Tre had not yet gone back into the hive to resume\ntheir nursing work, but with a few other bees had formed a group\nstanding a little way off from the group about Nuova. They were\nwhispering and looking and pointing toward Nuova. Uno finally left her\ngroup and came over and joined the bees about Nuova. She whispered to a\nfew of them, and finally spoke out loud enough to be generally heard.\n\n\"Nuova was not an Amazon,\" she said. \"Why should she fight? Is this the\nway of bees?\"\n\nDue and Tre shook their heads vigorously and murmured, \"No, no.\"\n\nAnd several other bees of their group shook their heads dubiously.\n\n\"No,\" spoke up Due, \"this is not the bee custom. A good bee does the\nthing she is set to do. For a nurse to use a lance! No, that is unheard\nof.\"\n\n\"No, no, it isn't done, you know,\" said a drone near by, wagging his\nhead wisely.\n\n\"If it hadn't been done, you loafer,\" cried Saggia angrily, \"you would\nhave starved to death before we could have refilled our pantries again\nafter the Black Bees had taken all our food!\"\n\n\"But it is not the bee way,\" interjected Tre; then adding boldly and\ntauntingly to Saggia, \"Are you a new bee, too?\"\n\n\"No,\" replied Saggia vigorously, \"I am an old bee--old enough to have\nlearned a little more than I knew when I was a nurse bee--a loafing\nnurse bee,\" she added, looking significantly and hard at Uno, Due, and\nTre in turn.\n\nThey all started guiltily and began to move slowly toward the entrance,\nbut all the time looking back malevolently at Saggia and Nuova.\n\n\"It's not the right bee way,\" they muttered. \"It isn't the usual way.\"\n\nSeveral other bees joined them in their muttering and head-shaking.\n\nJust then, however, a new excitement became manifest at the hive\nentrance. Those drones who had gone back into the hive were issuing now\npost-haste, while those still outside joined those coming out. To them\nhastened their attendants, and in a moment all was busy preparation and\nexpectation again.\n\nBeffa, who had moved over to the entrance as the drones began to come\nout, now came hopping and humming across the platform toward Saggia,\nNuova, and Hero. As he came near he was singing:\n\n    \"She comes; she comes;\n    Principessa now would wed;\n    She seeks the sky for marriage-bed.\n    Let drones aside their languor fling;\n    Bethink the prize; to be a King.\"\n\nHero started up, infected by the excitement and driven by the still\npotent bee tradition. \"She is coming,\" he murmured, \"the Princess.\"\n\nAll the bees were growing more and more excited. The drones began to\nform in a line. Their attendants worked feverishly at cleaning and\npreparing them. The other bees cleared a space near the entrance, in\nfront of the drones, whose eagerness was betrayed by their bending\nforward like runners on the starting-line. Hero started forward to take\nhis place at the nearest end of the line. Nuova tried to stand, Saggia\nhelping her. She tottered as if to fall, but regained her balance. Her\nface was drawn and tears welled from her eyes. She pushed Saggia to one\nside and totteringly followed Hero. As he moved to his place, as if in a\nsort of daze and hypnotized and driven by another will than his, Nuova\nstaggered into place behind him, as attendant, and made feeble attempts\nto brush his wings. He did not seem to see her nor even to realize her\npresence, but kept his eyes fixed on the entrance.\n\nThe commotion among the bees increased. All watched incessantly the\nopening of the hive. Suddenly the Princess was seen to be coming slowly\nand proudly out, still cold and set of face, but beautiful in figure and\ncarriage, truly queenly in all her seeming.\n\nThree or four attendants were busy behind her, brushing her long,\nslender wings, and removing every speck or stain from her body. The\ndrones all leaned farther forward, their eagerness infecting her. For\nshe became more animated and began spreading out and fluttering her\nwings. The drones did the same.\n\nBeffa was hopping about with ridiculous activity and awkwardness,\nhumming inaudible words. Suddenly, with a jerk, Hero turned his eyes\nfrom the Princess and let them wander about as if seeking something.\nThey rested on Beffa, who in response made motions in his dancing that\nunmistakably directed Hero to look behind him. He did so and saw Nuova.\nHe stared fixedly at her a moment. Then he leaned toward her and said\nin a curious, tense, but almost appealing tone, as if he were asking her\nfor advice or help:\n\n\"The Great Courting Chase is on! A Queen is to be won! The prize is to\nbe a King!\"\n\nNuova called on all her strength, physical and spiritual.\n\n\"Yes, yes,\" she gasped. \"Be ready! Lean forward! They are starting! You\nwill win!\" Her voice broke a little. \"You can't lose, Hero--wonderful\nHero. You will be King--our King--my King. Good-bye!\" She stifled a sob.\n\"Good luck! Good-bye!\"\n\nShe could say no more. She turned her face away from his, sobbing\nunrestrainedly. Saggia, who had come to her side, caught her and\nsupported her just as the Princess, with wings outspread and eyes fixed\noutward and upward, ran quickly to the outer edge of the platform,\nfollowed a little way behind by the drones in a group. As the Princess\nreached the platform's edge, she launched herself beautifully into the\nair and flew swiftly, first straight out and up and then curving gently\naway to the left. One after another the drones flew after her.\n\nNuova gazed fixedly after the following drones. Hero's delay with Nuova\nmade him the last to spring into the air. But he flew so strongly that\nit seemed certain that he would quickly make up for this handicap in the\ngreat race. Indeed, some of the onlooking bees began to call out, \"See\nhow Hero is gaining! He will surely win! Hero will be King!\"\n\nNuova had strained her gaze after Hero until he with all the others had\npassed from sight far out and up in the bright sky. As she gazed she had\nlifted on tiptoe and had even spread out her wings as if she would fly\nafter him, but now as he disappeared she collapsed and fell back heavily\nwith closed eyes and a pitiful sob into Saggia's supporting embrace.\n\nJust then Beffa came hopping and humming over to them and sang, as if\nmockingly, but really with sympathetic and comforting meaning:\n\n    \"Ha, ha, the sad attendant!\n    Her champion is too slow.\n    He'll never win the Princess,\n    Her kiss he'll never know.\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X\n\n_Nuova in the Beautiful Garden_\n\n\nWhen Nuova had recovered enough to face squarely the situation in her\nlife and in the life of the hive, she found herself very weak and very\nsad. Above all, she found the thought of going again into the dark hive\nto work extremely repugnant to her. And almost the first thing she said\nto Saggia, who had remained faithfully by her, supporting and caring for\nher, was that she would not go back into the hive to nurse or make wax\nor do anything else that meant staying inside.\n\nSaggia comforted her by saying that she would not have to work inside.\nThe kindly old bee whispered to her that there was always so much\nconfusion and such change in the hive arrangements whenever a new\nPrincess was born, and either she or the old Queen went out with many of\nthe workers, that she could easily change her kind of work now without\nany notice being taken of it. And to confirm this Saggia pointed to\nseveral of the nurses, among them Uno, Due, and Tre, making one after\nanother the little trial flights that Saggia had told Nuova to make\npreparatory to going into the garden out of sight of the hive. These\nnurses were plainly intending to become foragers. Even as Saggia and\nNuova watched them, one after another flew out higher and farther and\ndisappeared into the garden.\n\nIt was a beautiful garden on the edge of which the hive was set. The\nowner of the garden was a great lover and student of flowers. He liked\nbees and beetles and birds, too; all kinds of live things, plant or\nanimal. And no one was ever allowed to kill any creature, little or big,\nin his garden, so it was full to overflowing with life and animation.\nBirds made their nests in it; squirrels barked in the trees; even moles\nand gophers made their underground runways unmolested. There were open,\nsunny grass-plots for playing, and close little copses and coverts for\nhiding, and great trees for climbing to see out into the still wider\nworld beyond the garden walls. But the garden itself was world enough\nfor most of the creatures that lived in it. There were flowers enough\nfor the bees; seeds and worms enough for the birds; nuts enough for the\nsquirrels. And if some of the happy family in the garden had to live by\neating some of the others, still that was the way of life, and the only\nthing was to hope and try to make sure that the end would not come too\nsoon.\n\n[Illustration: In the Garden]\n\nNuova already loved the garden, although so far she had not been in it;\nat least not been any more in it than standing on the entrance platform\nof the hive and looking into it from this vantage-ground. But now she\nwas really to go out into it, and sad and tired though she was, she felt\na little thrill of happiness as she thought of what she might see over\nthere beyond the near-by bushes, out there among the brilliant flowers\nand the lush grasses. She turned to Saggia gratefully.\n\n\"Good-bye, dear Saggia,\" she said gently. \"I am going to go into the\ngarden now. I will make the little flights first as you told me, so as\nto be able to find my way back to the hive--but, I don't know, Saggia, I\ndon't feel like ever coming back to the hive.\" Her eyes filled with\ntears. \"He--he will never come back. He will win, and he will--will\ndie.\" She shuddered and nearly collapsed again.\n\nSaggia could say nothing. She believed, too, that Hero would win in the\nGreat Courting Chase. And if he won, he would die. It was really, she\nthought with some anger, a very stupid sort of arrangement; very unfair\nto the King; to be crowned because he was the finest, strongest, and\nswiftest drone in the hive, or in any of the other near-by hives whose\ndrones also joined in any Courting Chase they noticed going on, only to\ndie at once. It was simply not only stupid; it was brutal.\n\nShe did not like to think of Nuova's going off alone into the garden so\nsoon. And she could not put out of her mind the uneasy feeling that\nNuova would never come back to the hive at all; not even as a forager\nwho might go out and in as she pleased. Nuova had too plainly shown that\nher interest in living was gone, and her surrender to her impulses of\nthe moment was likely at any time to be complete even though it might\nlead to death itself. Saggia decided that she and Beffa were needed in\nthe garden. As Nuova left her to go to the edge of the platform for her\nfirst flights, Saggia scurried off in search of Beffa.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nA number of bees were busy at a little group of flowers in the garden\nwhen one of them, Uno, who had just turned around facing the general\ndirection of the hive, suddenly uttered an exclamation.\n\n\"Well, of all things!\" she said. \"Beffa in the garden!\" The other bees\nturned and stared.\n\n\"And Saggia!\" exclaimed one of them. \"Beffa and Saggia! Beffa in the\ngarden! What can he do here?\"\n\nBeffa, hearing them, released himself from Saggia's support, and began\nto make weak little hoppings and to sing. Poor Beffa; he was sadly\ntired, for because of his deformed wings he had had to walk all the way\nfrom the hive. And Saggia was tired, too, because she had walked with\nhim, and not only that, but had helped him over some of the rougher\nplaces.\n\nBeffa sang:\n\n    \"Beffa in the garden;\n    The prisoner in the sun;\n    No Queen in the palace;\n    No jesting to be done.\"\n\nHe stopped to rest, and Saggia went slowly to a flower, where she busied\nherself putting a little pollen into her pollen baskets.\n\nDue turned to Beffa. \"Hi, Beffa, you can sing and dance for us while we\ngather pollen and honey. And you can watch for Bee-Bird to see that he\ndoesn't surprise us. Oh, you can be useful. Hop, hop, hop-la!\" And she\nmade a little hop or two, in mimicry of Beffa.\n\nTre had been looking sharply at Saggia. \"And Saggia doesn't seem to be\ndoing much,\" she said, with asperity. \"Foraging again, is she? That is\nrather a dangerous business for such an old bee, isn't it?\" she said\nmalevolently. \"The two-legged man giant that owns this garden likes the\ntwo-legged bird giants. He is a brute! He protects the birds! And they\neat the insects! He might protect us, rather. Brute!\"\n\n\"Brute!\" cried the other bees. \"Protect the horrid birds, indeed! Sting\nhim if you see him.\"\n\nJust then a big blue-bottle fly that had been buzzing about the flowers\nventured too near a dark corner lower down in the bush, and was lunged\nat by a big black spider, which barely missed it. The blue-bottle\ndashed excitedly away with a tremendous buzzing, and all the bees jumped\nabout nervously a little.\n\nBeffa began to sing without rising from the ground, just moving his feet\nas if dancing:\n\n    \"Bee-birds in the tree-tops,\n    Spiders in the grass;\n    Death rides down the sunbeam,\n    Death leaps as you pass.\"\n\n\"Ugh!\" said Uno. \"Can't you sing something more cheerful? Be funny,\ncan't you?\"\n\nBeffa got up and hopped about a little. Then he sang:\n\n    \"Out among the flower-cups,\n    Dancing in the sun;\n    Now a drink of nectar,\n    Then another one.\n    Brushing up the pollen,\n    Hurry 'gainst the gloam,\n    Pail and basket over-full,\n    Off to hive and home!\"\n\nAll the bees skipped and danced and sang after him:\n\n    \"Pail and baskets over-full,\n    Off to hive and home!\"\n\nAfter singing this refrain several times and dancing happily about a few\nmoments, the bees set at their work again industriously. It was so\nbeautiful and so bright and so warm in the garden that one could not\nhelp being happy in it.\n\nAnd yet just then Nuova stepped out from behind a flowering bush looking\nvery weary and very sad. Saggia, who had been glancing around for her\nall the time, slipped quickly and quietly over to her without attracting\nthe attention of any of the bees, and before any other one had seen her.\n\nSaggia led Nuova around to the side of the bush where they would be out\nof sight of the other bees, and then spoke to her in a low tone.\n\n\"Are you all right, Nuova?\" she asked anxiously.\n\nNuova smiled wearily and sadly. \"Of course, I am all right,\" she said\ngently; \"who would not be out here in this wonderful world, this golden\nsunshine, this fragrant air? It's a place to be all right in all the\ntime. I am going to stay here.\"\n\n\"Stay here? What do you mean?\" asked Saggia.\n\n\"Simply that, dear Saggia,\" she replied gently, smiling; \"stay right\nhere in the warm sun, near the beautiful flowers. Do you think I am\ngoing back into the dark hive to die like that poor forager and be\ndragged off and tossed out like a piece of dirty wax?\" She shuddered.\n\"No, no; I am going to die out here, and lie in the soft grass under\nthat heliotrope there.\"\n\nSaggia spoke anxiously but sternly. \"Die? Die? Why do you talk of dying?\nHave you a right to die yet? Have you done all you should do for the\nhive? Are you going to shirk your duty? Anyway\"--and her voice grew more\nkindly--\"do you really want to die? Don't you want to do first all the\nthings a bee can do, to nurse--\"\n\n\"I have nursed,\" Nuova interrupted.\n\n\"And make wax--\" Saggia went on.\n\n\"I have made wax,\" Nuova broke in.\n\nSaggia persisted, \"And build cells--\"\n\n\"I have built cells,\" interrupted Nuova again.\n\n\"And gather honey--\" Saggia continued.\n\nNuova touched a near-by flower. \"I am gathering honey,\" she said.\n\nSaggia hesitated a moment, then began again. \"And--and--\" she\nstammered; then exclaimed suddenly and triumphantly--\"and clean floors!\"\n\nNuova smiled at Saggia's anticlimax. \"No, I haven't scrubbed the floor\nyet. I suppose I ought to enjoy that a little before I die. But you see\nI am not really old enough to have had time for _everything_.\"\n\n\"That's it,\" broke in Saggia warmly. \"You are not old enough yet. It is\nnonsense to talk of dying so young. You must live a long time yet. Look\nat me! Think how old I am!\"\n\nNuova smiled again, but grew earnest as she spoke. \"It is not how long\nyou live, Saggia; it is how much you live. I have not done everything,\nbut I have done most things. You, you dear wise, old, sensible bee, you\nhave done the things calmly one after another as it came time for you to\ndo them. But I have tried everything that was interesting and for only\nas long as it was. You have lived a long and useful life with much in\nit. I have lived a short and useless one; but also with much in it. You\nhave lived mostly for others, and have been mostly happy. I have lived\nmostly for myself, and been mostly unhappy. But that is the way I am,\nSaggia. That is my way of living and really I suppose, my way of being\nhappy; happily unhappy. And, Saggia\"--and Nuova bent close over to her,\nas if to tell her a secret--\"you know, don't you, that if I have missed\ncleaning floors, I have done something else in place of it; something\nyou haven't done. I have loved! And that is the happiest unhappiness I\nhave had.\"\n\nSaggia was truly shocked. \"Nuova,\" she exclaimed, \"haven't I told you\nbefore not to say such things! You have _not_ loved,\" she added, firmly,\n\"because you _cannot_ love. Poor little Nuova, you have much to learn\nyet about bee life.\"\n\n\"There is much about it I don't want to learn,\" muttered Nuova.\n\n\"There is much you must learn,\" replied Saggia sternly, but kindly. \"And\nsome of it you must learn now. When I say you cannot love, I mean\nexactly that; not that you ought not or must not, because other bees do\nnot, but simply that you cannot. Bee loving is not just liking and\nsighing and laughing and dancing and crying, and being always happy and\nunhappy at once, but it is becoming the mother of babies, many babies,\nand that only Princesses can become. And when they are the mothers of\nbabies, they are Queens. In bee land to be a mother is to be a Queen,\nand to be a Queen is only to be a mother.\"\n\nNuova was silent. She felt compelled to believe Saggia, who surely knew\nabout the life of bees if any one did, and who had always spoken\ntruthfully to her. And yet she had a feeling within her that seemed some\nway to contradict Saggia's knowledge.\n\n\"Well, then, Saggia,\" she said slowly, \"I haven't loved, but I have\nwished to love.\" And she added in a whisper, \"I _want_ to love!\"\n\n\"You cannot love,\" repeated Saggia firmly. \"Only Princesses can love.\nYou should not think of it any more.\"\n\nNuova looked up into the sky. And when she spoke it was as if she were\nspeaking in a dream. \"I want to love and I cannot love! Only a Princess\ncan love. And I am not a Princess. What can I do? Clean floors?\" She\nturned to Saggia and smiled sadly. \"No, I cannot clean floors, either,\"\nshe said softly. \"I am an unfortunate sort of bee, Saggia, a worthless\nsort. A new bee, but not new enough to love, and too new to clean\nfloors. Just a bee to lie under the heliotrope bush.\"\n\nJust then Beffa, who had come hopping and gently humming up to them\nunperceived by either, and who had overheard Nuova's last words, began\nto sing:\n\n    \"A heliotrope or a rose-bush,\n    A pale-blue flower or pink,\n    But a dead bee sees no colors\n    Nor smells sweet smells, I think.\n    An old world for old bees,\n    A new world for the new,\n    And, ah, who knows the real truth?\n    The untrue may be true.\"\n\nNuova was delighted, in her sadness, to see Beffa again. \"Beffa, you\ndear, funny Beffa!\" she cried. \"But how did you get out here in the\ngarden?\"\n\n    \"He couldn't come,\n    And so he came.\n    Can or cannot,\n    All's a name,\"\n\nsang Beffa in reply, hopping about more vigorously than ever.\n\nAs Beffa finished, Saggia saw some of the other bees looking scowlingly\ntoward them. She touched Nuova with an antenna.\n\n\"Nuova,\" she said in a low voice, \"we must get to work. The other bees\nare noticing us. We are idling. We must go to work. Beffa can sit here\nin the sunshine and watch us.\" She moved off toward a flower.\n\nNuova looked after her a moment, and then she turned to Beffa.\n\n\"Good old Saggia,\" she said. \"She is an example of industry, isn't she?\nBut I don't like her to work just because others are noticing us. That\nmakes me want _not_ to work.\" She stood loitering by him.\n\nBeffa deliberately stretched himself, with a yawn, and settling down\ncomfortably near a dandelion, he hummed, as if half-asleep already:\n\n    \"Some work because others talk;\n    Some talk because others work;\n    The wisest bee keeps wisest way,\n    He--goes--to--sleep!\"\n\nAnd as he finished he closed his eyes.\n\n[Illustration: Beffa settled down comfortably]\n\nNuova saw through Beffa's transparent means of sending her off to\nwork, and was as much amused as vexed. \"Oh,\" she said, \"I much prefer\nworking to talking with bees whose wisdom might put me to sleep, too.\nGood-bye.\" She made a mocking curtsy and went off slowly to a small\ngroup of flowers which was hidden by a large bush from the rest of the\nbees.\n\nAs soon as she had started, Beffa opened one eye to spy on her, and as\nshe disappeared behind the bush he slowly straightened up, very much\nawake and evidently strongly possessed by some idea. He let his eyes\nroam over all of the garden he could see, and he even scanned the air in\nall directions. Apparently not finding what he sought, he remained\nquiet, but alert, on the flat dandelion leaf. The bees at the flowers\nworked industriously. The garden was fragrant and quiet in the sun.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XI\n\n_Hero finds Nuova in the Garden_\n\n\nSaggia had joined a group of foragers at work, among whom were Uno and\nTre. These two bees at first moved away a little as Saggia came over,\nbut in their foraging work they gradually came close to her again.\nPretty soon Uno, after glancing toward Beffa sitting quietly by the\ndandelion, spoke to Saggia.\n\n\"The garden is not a place for jesting,\" she said sharply; \"nor for\nlistening to jesting. Beffa is not a good example for bees who work.\" As\nshe said this she looked significantly at Saggia, and several of the\nother bees, overhearing her, smiled maliciously.\n\nSaggia said nothing at first, but busied herself at her flowers. As she\nchanged, however, from one flower to another one near by, she said\nquietly: \"Beffa works harder than most of us.\"\n\n\"Do you call jesting work?\" asked Tre indignantly.\n\n\"I call Beffa's work hard work--for Beffa; and useful work,\" Saggia\nreplied.\n\n\"What other hive has a jester, a bee that does no work, that just hops\nand sings?\" demanded Uno angrily.\n\n\"We are more fortunate than other hives,\" said Saggia evenly. \"We have a\nbee who has time to think, and a clever tongue to say what he thinks.\"\n\nNo one spoke for a moment, then Tre said mechanically, as if repeating\nby rote: \"Bees ought not to think; and if they do they ought to keep\ntheir thoughts to themselves.\" Then she added maliciously: \"I think I\nlearned that from you, Saggia.\"\n\nThe other bees turned and smiled.\n\n\"One lives and learns,\" said Saggia, a little confused.\n\n\"Oh, worse yet!\" exclaimed Uno. \"'Bees do not learn: they know.' That\nalso is from Saggia,\" she said, turning to the other bees.\n\nThey all smiled again enjoying Saggia's discomfiture.\n\n\"Well,\" said Saggia desperately, \"bees do know most things,\nbut--not--everything.\"\n\nJust then Beffa came hopping toward them hurriedly. He was singing\nloudly, too, and was evidently much excited about something. As he\nreached the group of foraging bees he did not stop, but kept hopping\nright on by them singing loudly as he passed:\n\n    \"Hoptoad squats beneath the flower;\n    Waits that pleasant fateful hour\n    When honey-bee on food intent\n    Comes within his leafy tent;\n    Open! Shut! Poor bee, good-bye;\n    An ugly, horrid way to die!\"\n\nAs the bees heard this, they all became much frightened and excited,\nskipping about and peering in all directions.\n\n\"The Toad!\" they cried. \"Where? There! I don't see him! Where, Beffa?\nBeffa, where?\"\n\nBeffa's movements plainly indicated the direction of danger to be toward\nwhere he had come from, and the way of safety correspondingly in the\ndirection of his hopping. All the bees, therefore, with much buzzing and\njumping about, moved along with the hopping and singing Beffa. Only\nSaggia seemed a little slow to take alarm or to follow him closely. She\nwatched him curiously, and kept turning to look in the direction from\nwhich he had come. She remembered that Nuova was back there somewhere,\nand she could not believe that Beffa would leave her in danger in order\nto warn ever so many other bees. Saggia knew well poor Beffa's hopeless\nlove for Nuova.\n\nAs a matter of fact, Beffa had seen not a toad, but something else,\nwhich, under the circumstances of bee life and tradition, was much more\nextraordinary, and he had come hopping over to lead off the other bees\nthat they might not also see it.\n\nWhat he had seen was something that his keen wits had told him all along\nhe might see: in fact, he had been looking for it all the time since he\nhad been in the garden; it was something that made him happy and unhappy\nat the same time. It was something that would make Nuova the happiest\nbee in the world, for a little while at least, though it might mean\nsomething very dreadful to her in the end. And what could make Nuova\nhappy made him happy--even though her happiness should come from seeing\nsomebody else who would almost make her forget that Beffa ever lived.\nWhat Beffa had seen was Hero flying slowly down into the garden near\nwhere Nuova was. It was certain that they would see each other in a\nmoment.\n\nIn fact, Nuova, turning away from the flower which she had been slowly\nand listlessly rifling of nectar, saw Hero just a moment after he\nalighted. Her heart gave a great jump, and her first impulse was to slip\naway before he could see her; but when she saw how dejected and sad he\nseemed, she felt a great pity for him and wanted to comfort him. Just\nthen he lifted his eyes and saw her. He started, then controlled himself\nand came to her. \"Nuova,\" he said quietly but earnestly; \"Nuova, I am\nglad you are here.\"\n\nNuova could hardly speak. She was so tense with excitement, with wonder,\nwith happiness that they were together again. But what had happened? How\ncould this be?\n\n\"You did not win?\" she stammered. \"You are not dead?\" She stared at him\nwith painful intentness.\n\n\"I did not go on,\" said Hero slowly and somberly.\n\nNuova did not understand. \"An accident?\" she cried. \"You could not fly?\nYour wings were not--\" she stopped, alarmed and almost in tears at her\nthought. \"Surely I did not hurt them when I--I--pulled them?\"\n\nHero did not understand clearly what she meant. In fact, he was too\nintent on the overwhelming fact of what he had just done, of the\nabsolute break he had just made with bee tradition, to think, for the\nmoment, of anything else.\n\n\"No, no,\" he said; \"I just decided not to go on. I--wanted to come to\nyou.\"\n\nNuova could not realize at once all he meant by these words. The thing\nclearest in her mind just now was what Saggia and all the others had\ntold her so often. She began to speak slowly and almost mechanically as\nher memory guided her.\n\n\"But you can't do that,\" she said. \"It--it--isn't done, you know. You\n_must_ chase the Princess; you _must_ win her; and you--you\"--she\nsobbed--\"you _must_ die.\"\n\nShe stepped toward him, excitedly, with her hands outstretched to urge\nhim on. \"Go on!\" she exclaimed. \"Go on! Start again! You are so much\nswifter and stronger than the others! You can beat them yet! Hurry!\nFly!\"\n\nIn her excitement and half-crazed exaltation she pressed against him to\npush him into starting. He held her closely to him for a moment,\ncaressing her gently. But soon she drew violently away, and spoke again\nwith choking voice. \"Fly!\" she said. \"Go on! Go on!\"\n\nHero shook his head doggedly. \"No, I will not go. I cannot go. I never\nwanted to go. I wanted to come to you. I didn't know you were in the\ngarden. But here you are.\" In his joy at being with her, he began to\ndismiss the dark thoughts of his break with bee custom. He looked\nintently and eagerly at her.\n\n\"Yes, here you are, I have come to you. I have come to tell you that\nI\"--he stumbled a little in his speech, and smiled slightly--\"I--am a\nnew bee, too!\"\n\nNuova laughed happily. Then she grew serious and puzzled. \"And Saggia\nand Beffa,\" she said. \"Are we all new bees in this hive?\"\n\nHero smiled. \"Uno, Due, and Tre--\" he said.\n\n\"Ugh! horrid bees,\" said Nuova with a grimace. \"They would like to kill\nme.\"\n\n\"Beasts!\" broke in Hero, \"I'll kill them!\" But then he remembered the\nfact that he had no lance nor by bee tradition could have any. \"Absurd,\"\nhe said in disgust. \"What a world, where only the women may carry lances\nand fight and work, and the men are only loafers and lovers, and can\nonly love by tradition, at that. Bah! I'd rather be even a human being.\nThey are silly enough, those awkward giants, and can't fly and eat other\nanimals as spiders and snakes do, but their men can work and fight; and\nthey can love whom they like. At least they can if they don't try to be\ntoo much like us, as some of them seem to want to be. It's a terrible\nthing to be a man bee. We have no rights at all!\"\n\nNuova looked up at him wonderingly. \"Why, the other drones seem to like\nto loaf,\" she said. \"Anyway, they don't object.\"\n\n\"Don't object!\" exclaimed Hero contemptuously. \"They don't think; they\ndon't feel! Each just does what the others do and all just do what\ndrones have always done.\"\n\n\"But how else are we to know what to do,\" persisted Nuova, who had\nlearned her lesson well from Saggia, \"except by seeing what others do,\nand being told what the bees before us did?\"\n\nHero was amazed and disconcerted to hear Nuova talk in this way.\n\n\"Why, you talk like Saggia!\" he said. \"What do you mean? Haven't you\nalways objected to doing what the others do? Haven't you always tried to\ndo what you most wanted to? And haven't you wanted to talk with me? I\nthought you--liked me.\"\n\nNuova was disconcertingly calm. \"Oh, yes, I have objected to some\nthings, and I do like to talk with you. And I like you. But all that\nmust not interfere with the work and life of the community. And I am\nafraid it is interfering. I ought to be getting more honey, and you\nought to be flying after the Princess.\" She paused; then she added,\ndeterminedly and even severely: \"You must go right away. You can catch\nup with them yet, and beat them, and--and--win her.\" Nuova had grown\nmore excited and earnest as she continued urging him, but her voice\nbroke a little as she uttered the last words.\n\nHero, paying too little attention to her manner and reading nothing in\nit, so seized was he by surprise at Nuova's new attitude, was yet\ndoggedly intent on speaking out his own feelings. \"No, I am not going\nafter the Princess,\" he declared, speaking almost roughly in his\nvehemence. \"I stopped flying because I wished to, and I came here\nbecause I wished to, and I shall talk to you because I wish to. You\n_must_ hear me! Nuova, it is not the Princess that I love; it is you.\"\nNuova started. \"Yes, you; just you; all you. I love _you_, Nuova.\"\n\nNuova had stood rigidly at first, but then unconsciously swayed a little\ntoward him. Then she caught herself and stepped back, all the time\nstaring at him fixedly. He leaned toward her as he finished speaking,\nbut made no other motion.\n\nNuova began to speak, still holding herself rigid and staring at him.\nShe spoke in an even, monotonous voice, even mechanically, and as if\ndirected by some foreign influence.\n\n\"You cannot love me,\" she said. \"You can only love a Princess. I cannot\nlove you. I cannot love anybody. There are other things for me to do. I\nhave not cleaned floors; I must clean floors. And you, you must chase\nPrincesses, chase Princesses, chase--Princesses--all--the--time.\" Her\nvoice trailed away into tense silence, and she swayed as if about to\nfall, but recovered herself, and half-turned as if to move away.\n\nHero stepped forward, caught hold of her roughly, and spoke harshly.\n\"You shall not clean floors,\" he said, \"and I will not court the\nPrincess.\" Then suddenly he spoke tenderly, \"Nuova, I love you. Saggia\nsays I can't; all of them say I can't; you say I can't. Well, I do. That\nis all. That is the answer. I have never loved a Princess and I do love\nyou; I have loved you from the moment I saw you.\" He spoke more\nimpetuously. \"I didn't know what it was at first; now I do. I found out\nwhen I started to fly after Principessa. I can fly faster than any other\ndrone; yet every one was beating me. I can fly higher than any other\nbee; but I couldn't rise at all. Why? Because of _you_, Nuova; because I\nloved _you_, Nuova, and could not love Principessa. And they say that\nyou cannot love me. Saggia says so, does she?--and all of them say so,\ndo they?--and you say so, do you? Well, they are all mistaken. Just as\nthey are all mistaken about me. I can love _you_, because I _do_. You\ncan love me, because you are going to. You were not an Amazon, yet you\nfought. You are not a Princess, but you are going to love. I can teach\nyou; I _will_ teach you.\"\n\nNuova was almost carried away by Hero's speech--and her own\ninclinations. But she still fought blindly and feebly against what she\nwanted most. \"No, no,\" she stammered; \"I must work; I must go; I am only\na worker bee; I _cannot_ love; it is all fixed; it has been that way for\na long time; _I_ know; Saggia knows; _Beffa_--\"\n\nShe stopped short, remembering some of Beffa's cryptic words.\n\nJust then Beffa's voice was heard. He was coming toward them hopping and\nsinging.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XII\n\n_The Happy Ending_\n\n\nBeffa had not been able to hold the foragers any longer away from that\npart of the garden where Nuova and Hero were. The flowers here were more\nabundant and sweeter with honey, and the bees soon forgot their fright\nof the toad they had not seen--and that Beffa had not, either.\n\nHero and Nuova were still concealed by the bush, behind which they\nstood, from the returning bees, but it was only a matter of a short time\nbefore they would certainly be seen. Beffa, therefore, came hopping\ntoward them and singing. He could at least warn them of the approach of\nthe others. So he sang loudly:\n\n    \"Ah, well, who knows?\n    Ah, well, who knows?\n    The old world for the old bee;\n    The new world for the new;\n    For who may know the real truth?\n    The untrue may be true.\n    Ah, well, who knows?\n    Ah, well, who knows?\"\n\nHero turned triumphantly to Nuova. \"Yes, yes, you hear?\" he said. \"Beffa\nknows. Say it; say it. Beffa knows: not Saggia; not the others; but\nBeffa. They are all blind. They only see what has been, but Beffa sees\nwhat may be. And you see it, Nuova, and I see it. You are a new bee,\nNuova, and so is Beffa, and so am I. And we shall do new things; live a\nnew life. Ah, Nuova, my little Nuova! I love you, and you love me. My\nlittle Nuova!\"\n\nNuova could say nothing, do nothing. It was too much. She could only\nlook up through a mist of tears into Hero's face and smile happily at\nhim; it was half-smiling, half-crying, but unmistakable to Hero for what\nit truly was; the full revelation of Nuova's consent to all he had said.\nThey stood together, silent in their great happiness. And thus Uno saw\nthem. Uno was the first of the returned foragers to come, in seeking new\nflowers, around the bush and in sight of them. She stared at them\namazed. Then, angry and malevolent, she beckoned, without calling out,\nto her companions to come to her. They crowded up and looked where Uno\npointed. They were astounded and outraged. Uno first spoke up.\n\n\"They call themselves bees!\" she said with scorn and malice.\n\n\"Beasts, rather!\" said Due similarly.\n\n\"No, human beings,\" said Tre. \"Like the daughter of the owner of the\ngarden and her lover. In secret, and against all the customs. Shame and\nscandal!\"\n\n\"Drive them out! Kill them!\" burst out all the other bees, who had come\ncrowding up at the words of Uno, Due, and Tre. \"Call the Amazons! Sting\nthem to death! Hero, the faithless one! Nuova, the silly new bee! Hero,\nour finest drone! Nuova, the pretty little nurse! Traitors! Kill them!\"\n\nIt was a terrible moment for Nuova and Hero, for death looked them in\nthe face. But they stood quietly side by side realizing their impending\nfate, yet fearless in their exaltation. Neither one spoke. They looked\nat each other with great eyes shining with love and happiness.\nDeath--together--was such a little thing. It was even a thing, under the\ncircumstances, to be courted. There seemed, indeed, nothing else that\ncould be a \"happy ending\" for Nuova and Hero's romance. And as the\nAmazons pressed forward with lances set and already almost touching the\ndevoted pair, it seemed to be the inevitable and immediate end. Yet,\njust at the moment when Nuova, with one last look of love and joy to\nHero, turned full toward the shining lance points as if to say,\n\"Welcome, sweet Death!\" something happened.\n\nA cry from the air just above them was heard. A messenger bee, greatly\nexcited and almost breathless, was dropping down to them and gasping:\n\"The Princess! The Princess! The Princess is lost! The Bee-Bird has\ncaught the Princess!\"\n\nThe mob about Hero and Nuova stopped in its attack and stood still,\nthunderstruck by the news. The messenger dropped to the grass just\nbetween the foremost Amazons and the pair of lovers, and there collapsed\nwith fatigue and grief. She was caught and supported by Saggia and\nBeffa, who had pushed forward out of the crowd at the first cry from the\nmessenger.\n\nThe horror-stricken bees were dumb for a moment, overwhelmed by the\ncatastrophe. Then they began to call out, all speaking confusedly\ntogether: \"The Princess is lost! The Bee-Bird has killed Principessa!\nOur only Princess! The old Queen gone, the new Queen killed! Our hive is\ndoomed! We are queenless! No more children in our hive! It is our end!\"\n\n[Illustration: \"The Princess is lost!\"]\n\nAll the while they were speaking they surged back and forth, turning to\neach other. They seemed utterly at a loss what to do. None any longer\npaid any attention to Nuova and Hero standing there, still silent and\nmotionless together, as if with no more thought of their present\nmomentary escape from the death that was so close to them than they had\nhad for their apparent certain destruction a moment before.\n\nSaggia had not called out with the other bees. Nor had she moved away\nfrom her position near Hero and Nuova, where she was still supporting\nthe messenger. But she had been looking keenly first at the shouting\nbees and then at Nuova and Hero. Her face was alight with a new thought\nand strong purpose. As the cries of the bees died down from exhaustion\nfor a moment, she lifted her head and began to speak in a loud, clear\nvoice.\n\n\"Bees,\" she said, \"a terrible thing has happened to us!\" Some of the\nbees cried out again in lamentation. Saggia paused a moment till there\nwas silence again. Then she went on.\n\n\"But we stand before a wonderful happening that may be our saving.\" As\nshe said this, she half-turned toward Hero and Nuova so as to call the\nattention of the bees to them. As she did this a few bees, notably Uno,\nDue, and Tre, began to gesture angrily again toward the couple, and to\nmutter against them. But Saggia paid no attention to this, except\nperhaps to lift her voice a little higher and to speak more rapidly.\n\n\"I am an old bee,\" she said, \"and know the lore of bees better than any\nothers of you. And I tell you plainly that the death of the Princess\ndoes not mean that all is lost. I tell you that we have a means of\nsaving our hive. Sometimes a bee is born, who is not a Princess, but who\nis of a different sort from the rest of us workers; a bee who can not\nonly work, but _love_; who can love and be loved and be the mother of\nbees.\"\n\nShe turned now swiftly to Nuova, stretched out her antennae and wings\ndramatically, and spoke as with the voice of an oracle.\n\n\"Nuova is such a bee!\" she exclaimed solemnly. \"Nuova can be a Queen for\nus! She loves Hero. Do you, Nuova?\" Nuova turned a rapt face up to\nHero's.\n\n\"And Hero loves Nuova. Do you, Hero?\" Hero leaned down to Nuova and\nkissed her.\n\nSaggia turned again to the bees. \"That Hero loves Nuova proves that she\ncan be loved; that Nuova loves Hero proves that she can be our Queen.\nLet Nuova, the new bee, be our new Queen!\"\n\nThe bees were already buzzing and fluttering about in great excitement\nagain. They were not able to comprehend immediately all that Saggia's\nwords implied, but they saw in them a hope for their hive, and some of\nthe bees already began to call out joyously. Just then Beffa began\ndancing vigorously and waving his wings and antennae in triumph and\nsinging loudly and clearly:\n\n    \"Bee-Bird may yet be beaten;\n    We yet may peal the wedding bell,\n    Although our Queen is eaten!\"\n\nThen he made a grand whirl which brought him squarely in front of Nuova,\nand with a deep curtsy and elaborate gesture he called out to all the\nbees, like a herald:\n\n\"The Queen has passed. Long live the Queen!\"\n\nAnd Saggia immediately echoed him, also bowing low before Nuova: \"The\nQueen has passed. Long live the Queen!\"\n\nOther bees took up the shout, which soon spread to all. Beffa beckoned\nall to follow him in a triumphal march and dance around the amazed and\nhappy pair, and altogether they set up a great song of joy and triumph.\nNuova and Hero were not only saved, but they were become in a second\nKing and Queen of the hive. It was breath-taking. They could only look\nat each other in utter thanksgiving and love. But as Beffa, tiring of\nthe exertion of the dance, stopped by the side of Nuova, she put out an\nantenna caressingly to him and then turned to Hero.\n\n\"Hero, my King,\" she said proudly.\n\n\"Hero, our King!\" proudly shouted all the bees.\n\nAnd then she turned to Beffa.\n\n\"Beffa, my jester,\" she said lovingly.\n\n\"Beffa, our jester!\" shouted all the bees.\n\nBeffa gave a little hop; then looking up at Nuova, he sang:\n\n    \"Ah, well, who knows?\n    Ah, well, who knows?\"\n\n\nTHE END","title":"Nuova; or, The New Bee","tradition":"folklore-oral-tradition","translated_text":null,"word_count":28063}