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“And the Hival Honey is here, is it not?” It opened a fresh store-cell to prove it.

“Ye-es, but it won’t be long at this rate,” said Melissa.

“The rates have nothing to do with it. This Hive produces the Hival Honey. You people never seem to grasp the economic simplicity that underlies all life.”

“Oh, me!” said poor Melissa, “haven’t you ever been beyond the Gate?”

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

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

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

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

“Who cares?” said Sacharissa. “I know now how drones feel the day before they’re killed. A short life and a merry one for me.”

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

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

“I do. How’s our Queen?” said Melissa.

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

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

“You’d be put to it to find one. The Hive’s all Wax-moth and muckings. But–well?”

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

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

There is no room to tell how the experienced Melissa found a far-off frame so messed and mishandled by abandoned cell-building experiments that, for very shame, the bees never went there. How in that ruin she blocked out a Royal Cell of sound wax, but disguised by rubbish till it looked like a kopje among deserted kopjes. How she prevailed upon the hopeless Queen to make one last effort and lay a worthy egg. How the Queen obeyed and died. How her spent carcass was flung out on the rubbish heap, and how a multitude of laying sisters went about dropping drone-eggs where they listed, and said there was no more need of Queens. How, covered by this confusion, Sacharissa educated certain young bees to educate certain new-born bees in the almost lost art of making Royal Jelly. How the nectar for it was won out of hours in the teeth of chill winds. How the hidden egg hatched true–no drone, but Blood Royal. How it was capped, and how desperately they worked to feed and double-feed the now swarming Oddities, lest any break in the food-supplies should set them to instituting inquiries, which, with songs about work, was their favourite amusement. How in an auspicious hour, on a moonless night, the Princess came forth a Princess indeed, and how Melissa smuggled her into a dark empty honey-magazine, to bide her time; and how the drones, knowing she was there, went about singing the deep disreputable love-songs of the old days–to the scandal of the laying sisters, who do not think well of drones. These things are, written in the Book of Queens, which is laid up in the hollow of the Great Ash Ygdrasil.

After a few days the weather changed again and became glorious. Even the Oddities would now join the crowd that hung out on the alighting-board, and would sing of work among the merry, merry blossoms till an untrained ear might have received it for the hum of a working hive. Yet, in truth, their store-honey had been eaten long ago. They lived from day to day on the efforts of the few sound bees, while the Wax-moth fretted and consumed again their already ruined wax. But the sound bees never mentioned these matters. They knew, if they did, the Oddities would hold a meeting and ball them to death.