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He made a dash at me and seized me by the ears; he kicked and beat me till I can scarcely move." "His energies must have been toned up a good deal," said the Bee-man. "Toned up! I should say so!" cried the other. "I raised a howl, and a Scissor-jawed Clipper came out of his hole, and got after him; but that lazy fool ran so fast that he could not be caught."
She told much more about her interview: the neat home, the bees in the orchard, the well-kept garden. "When he's sober," she said, "he seems to be a steady, hard worker." After that I desired more than ever to see deep into the life of the strange bee-man. Why was he what he was? And at last the time came, as things come to him who desires them faithfully enough.
The Bee-man now ran on and soon overtook the Languid Youth. "You need not be in a hurry now," said the latter, "for the rules of this institution don't allow the creatures inside to come out of this opening, or to hang around it. If they did, they would frighten away visitors. They go in and out of holes in the upper part of the mountain." The two proceeded on their way.
Well, I will tell you a splendid way to begin. You see that Bee-man has put down his hive and his coat with the bees in it. Just wait till he gets out of sight, and then catch a lot of those bees, and squeeze them flat.
They remained at the cottage all night, and in the afternoon of the next day the Bee-man said to the Youth: "It may seem an odd thing to you, but never in all my life have I felt myself drawn towards any living being as I am drawn towards this baby. Therefore I believe that I have been transformed from a baby." "Good!" cried the Youth. "It is my opinion that you have hit the truth.
With the one I was blustering, hail-fellow-well-met, listening with eagerness to his expansive talk; but to the other I said little, feeling my way slowly to his friendship, for I could not help looking upon him as a pathetic figure. He needed a friend! The exuberant bee-man was sufficient unto himself, glorious in his visions, and I had from him no little entertainment.
But, for all that, he was happy and contented; he had all the honey he wanted, and his bees, whom he considered the best company in the world, were as friendly and sociable as they could be, and seemed to increase in number every day. One day, there stopped at the hut of the Bee-man a Junior Sorcerer.
"Perhaps she is the mother of this child," said the Youth, "and if you give it to her she will no longer think of tearing her hair." "But," said the Bee-man, "you don't really think this is her child?" "Suppose you go over and see," said the other. The Bee-man hesitated a moment, and then he walked toward the woman.
And yet when I thought of the pathetic, shy bee-man, hemmed in by his sunless walls, I felt that I should also say something. Seeing two men struggling shall I not assist the better? Shall I let the sober one be despoiled by him who is riotous? There are realities, but there are also moralities if we can keep them properly separated. "Most of us," I said finally, "are in some respects drunkards.
He was a bee-man. I stopped and asked him about his honey, and whether the fall flowers had been plenty; I ran my eye over his horse, and said that it seemed to be a good animal. But I could get very little from him, and that little in a rather low voice. I came away with my interest whetted to a still keener edge. How a man has come to be what he is is there any discovery better worth making?
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