"Who cares?" said Sacharissa. "I know now how drones feel the day
before they're killed. A short life and a merry one for me."
"If it only were merry! But think of those awful, solemn,
lop-sided Oddities waiting for us at home crawling and clambering
and preaching--and dirtying things in the dark."
"I don't mind that so much as their silly songs, after we've fed
'em, all about 'work among the merry, merry blossoms," said
Sacharissa from the deeps of a stale Canterbury bell.
"I do. How's our Queen?" said Melissa.
"Cheerfully hopeless, as usual. But she lays an egg now and
then."
"Does she so?" Melissa backed out of the next bell with a jerk.
"Suppose now, we sound workers tried to raise a Princess in some
clean corner?"
"You'd be put to it to find one. The Hive's all Wax-moth and
muckings. But--well?"
"A Princess might help us in the time of the Voice behind the
Veil that the Queen talks of. And anything is better than working
for Oddities that chirrup about work that they can't do, and
waste what we bring home.
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