THE BEE BOY'S SONG Bees! Bees! Hark to the Bees! 'Hide from your neighbours as much as you please, But all that has happened to us you must tell! A maiden in her glory, Dwindle down and leave you! Marriage, birth or buryin', News across the seas, Don't you wait where trees are, But if you never grieve your Bees, JUST 'DYMCHURCH FLIT' a The mothers at dusk, a soft September rain began to fall on the hop-pickers. wheeled the bouncing perambulators out of the gardens; bins were put away, and tallybooks made up. The young couples strolled home, two to each umbrella, and the single men walked behind them laughing. Dan and Una, who had been picking after their lessons, marched off to roast potatoes at the oasthouse, where old Hobden, with Blue-eyed Bess, his lurcher-dog, lived all the month through, drying the hops. They settled themselves, as usual, on the sack-strewn cot in front of the fires, and, when Hobden drew up the shutter, stared, as usual, at the flameless bed of coals spouting its heat up the dark well of the old-fashioned roundel. Slowly he cracked off a few fresh pieces of coal, packed them, with fingers that never flinched, exactly where they would do most good; slowly he reached behind him till Dan tilted the potatoes into his iron scoop of a hand; carefully he arranged them round the fire, and then stood for a moment, black against the glare. As he closed the shutter, the oast-house seemed dark before the day's end, and he lit the candle in the lanthorn. The children liked all these things because they knew them so well. |