Alice and Beatrice

								

The little girls were much pleased, and thanked their grandmamma well.
Afterwards they returned slowly through the hot garden to the verandah,
and they were very glad of its cool shade.
Their grandmamma told them a great deal about bees: that this immense
family, of often twenty thousand bees, was obedient to one single bee, a
queen bee, who was their mother and their queen, for whom they worked
and gathered stores of honey, and whom they protected from all harm.
Grandmamma told them how busy and industrious the bees were, how early
they were up in the summer, and how many times they flew out and
returned ladened with honey or with pollen which they take from the
flowers, what distances they fly in search of flowers, and it has been
proved that they will fly even several miles to gather honey.
She described to the children how carefully they laid up a store for the
winter; and said that it was cruel of people to kill the bees to get the
honey, instead of being content to take only what the bees can spare,
which is often a great deal.
‘I never kill my bees, you know, and I have plenty of honey—indeed, much
more than I want.’
‘I can say, “How doth the little busy bee!”’ said Beatrice, and her
grandmamma let her repeat the whole of the little hymn, which Beatrice
did very nicely, and grandmamma said, ‘You will soon see through the
little windows of your new hive “how skilfully she builds her cells.” I
will let you read about the cells in a nice book called “Homes without
Hands.”
‘There is another insect,’ grandmamma went on, ‘which is very
industrious, and lays up a large store of food for the winter, and that
is the ant. There is a very pretty fable in French about the ant and the
grasshopper, which, when you are older, I should like you to learn.’
‘But will you tell us about it, grandmamma?’ asked Alice.
‘Well then, my Alice, I will try, but I cannot tell it in the pretty and
clever way it is told in French. It was thus: One cold stormy October, a
grasshopper, who had skipped and chirped in the sun all through the
summer time, came to an ant, and said, “Good Mrs. Ant, you have such a
large store of corn and seed in your hill, will you spare me a little,
for I am very hungry?”’
‘Now, though the ant was very industrious I am afraid that she was not
very charitable, or perhaps she thought it was useless to feed lazy
people who will not work; so she answered and said, “Pray, Mrs.
Grasshopper, what did you do all the summer, while I was working hard,
and laying in a store to keep my children through the winter?”’
‘“Oh, in summer I sang and chirped all the day long,” replied the
grasshopper.
‘“Then I advise you,” said the ant, “to dance now;” and the ant went
into her house in her hill, and left the grasshopper to die.
‘You know, both of you, what an ant-hill is, do not you?’
‘Yes, grandmamma, I remember those little mounds, which I wanted to kick