"Tumble out!" she called across the
youngsters' quarters. "All you who aren't feeding babies, show a
leg. Scrap-wax pillars for the Ga-ate!" She chanted the order at
length.
"That's nonsense," a downy, day-old bee answered. "In the first
place, I never heard of a Death's Header coming into a hive.
People don't do such things. In the second, building pillars to
keep 'em out is purely a Cypriote trick, unworthy of British
bees. In the third, if you trust a Death's Head, he will trust
you. Pillar-building shows lack of confidence. Our dear sister in
grey says so."
"Yes. Pillars are un-English and provocative, and a waste of wax
that is needed for higher and more practical ends," said the
Wax-moth from an empty store-cell.
"The safety of the Hive is the highest thing I've ever heard of.
You mustn't teach us to refuse work," Melissa began.
"You misunderstand me, as usual, love. Work's the essence of
life; but to expend precious unreturning vitality and real labour
against imaginary danger, that is heartbreakingly absurd! If I
can only teach a--a little toleration--a little ordinary kindness
here toward that absurd old bogey you call the Death's Header, I
shan't have lived in vain.
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