Obviously, since her one practical joke costs her her life, the bee can have but small sense of humour; but her fundamentally dismal and ungracious outlook on life impressed me beyond words.  She had paralysed locomotion, wiped out trade, social intercourse, mutual trust, love, friendship, sport, music (the lonely steam-organ had run down at last), all that gives substance, colour or savour to life, and yet, in the barren desert she had created, was not one whit more near to the evolution of a saner order of things.  The Heavens were darkened with the swarms’ divided counsels; the street shimmered with their purposeless sallies.  They clotted on tiles and gutter-pipes, and began frenziedly to build a cell or two of comb ere they discovered that their queen was not with them; then flung off to seek her, or whirled, dishevelled and insane, into another hissing nebula on the false rumour that she was there.  I scowled upon them with disfavour, and a massy, blue thunder-head rose majestically from behind the elm-trees of Sumtner Barton Rectory, arched over and scowled with me.  Then I realised that it was not bees nor locusts that had darkened the skies, but the on-coming of the malignant English thunderstorm—­the one thing before which even Deborah the bee cannot express her silly little self.

‘Aha! Now you’ll catch it,’ I said, as the herald gusts set the big drum rolling down the street like a box-kite.  Up and up yearned the dark cloud, till the first lightning quivered and cut.  Deborah cowered.  Where she flew, there she fled; where she was, there she sat still; and the solid rain closed in on her as a book that is closed when the chapter is finished.  By the time it had soaked to my second rug, Penfentenyou appeared at the window, wiping his false mouth on a napkin.

‘Are you all right?’ he inquired.  ’Then that’s all right!  Mrs. Bellamy says that her bees don’t sting in the wet.  You’d better fetch Lingnam over.  He’s got to pay for them and the bicycle.’

I had no words which the silver-haired lady could listen to, but paddled across the flooded street between flashes to the pond on the green.  Mr. Lingnam, scarcely visible through the sheeting downpour, trotted round the edge.  He bore himself nobly, and lied at the mere sight of me.

‘Isn’t this wet?’ he cried.  ’It has drenched me to the skin.  I shall need a change.’

‘Come along,’ I said.  ’I don’t know what you’ll get, but you deserve more.’

Penfentenyou, dry, fed, and in command, let us in.  ‘You,’ he whispered to me, ’are to wait in the scullery.  Mrs. Bellamy didn’t like the way you talked about her bees.  Hsh!  Hsh!  She’s a kind-hearted lady.  She’s a widow, Lingnam, but she’s kept his clothes, and as soon as you’ve paid for the damage she’ll rent you a suit.  I’ve arranged it all!’

‘Then tell him he mustn’t undress in my hall,’ said a voice from the stair-head.

‘Tell her—­’ Lingnam began.