Then they took to cadging
round sugar-factories and breweries, because it was easiest to
get their material from those places, and the mixture of glucose
and beer naturally fermented in store and blew the store-cells
out of shape, besides smelling abominably. Some of the sound bees
warned them that ill-gotten gains never prosper, but the Oddities
at once surrounded them and balled them to death. That was a
punishment they were almost as fond of as they were of eating,
and they expected the sound bees to feed them. Curiously enough
the age-old instinct of loyalty and devotion towards the Hive
made the sound bees do this, though their reason told them they
ought to slip away and unite with some other healthy stock in the
apiary.
"What, about seven and three-quarter minutes' work now?" said
Melissa one day as she came in. "I've been at it for five hours,
and I've only half a load."
"Oh, the Hive subsists on the Hival Honey which the Hive
produces," said a blind Oddity squatting in a store-cell.
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