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before it is cold and jelly liquid before it solidifies. Nan saw his worry. “Hard-boiled eggs and lettuce, Ezra,” she said. “I’ll boil the eggs. And then strawberries and cream. We can’t need them all for jam.”
“The Master don’t hold with hard-boiled eggs,” said Ezra.
“He can’t always have everything he likes,” said Nan. “He’s lucky to have anything at all on a jam-making day. And whose idea was it that we should make jam today? I could see in your eye that it wasn’t yours. And he won’t help with the jam.”
Nan really loved Uncle Ambrose just as much as ever but she was tired and cross after anxiety and the late night. When one is tired it is always one’s nearest and dearest who fall under one’s heaviest displeasure.
“How much are we paid for picking strawberries?” asked Robert.
Nan transferred her displeasure from Uncle Ambrose to her elder brother. “You dare ask to be paid for picking strawberries!” she said. “You mean wretch! Can’t you do anything for love?”
Robert opened his mouth to make a nasty retort, Betsy upset the sugar on purpose because no one was taking any notice of her and Timothy trod on Absolom by accident. Absolom, usually so sweet-tempered, snapped and snarled, Andromache leapt for the safety of the drainboard and the kittens swarmed up the roller towel.
Ezra perceived that this sunny morning was likely to
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develop into one of those days when even the nicest children and dearest animals appear to be possessed with demons. “Now then!” he said. “I won’t have no nasty tempers in my kitchen. Let alone they scare away the bees. Bees won’t stand no nasty words in their dominions. You have to be proper careful with bees. No more now or when us gets to the top of the garden to pick them strawberries we’ll find the hives empty.” Four pairs of eyes gazed at him in horror. “I’m not saying as it will be so,” he consoled them. “But it might be so. Now us’ll clear away the breakfast things and wash up and boil them eggs and while we work us’ll sing, just to show the bees all unpleasantness is now past. ‘Rule Britannia’ now. You all know that. Here goes.”
To the clashing of cymbals, as the crockery and saucepans were flung pell-mell into the sink, Ezra lifted up his voice and sang and the children joined in at the tops of their voices. The noise was wonderful and in his library Uncle Ambrose sighed and laid down his pen. His powers of concentration were great but not quite great enough to render him entirely soundproof against uninhibited juvenile enjoyment. But all things pass, he told himself, and presently a slight lessening of the din suggested that the singers were passing out of the kitchen and up the garden with their baskets. With a sigh of relief he took up his pen again.
Ezra and the children sang the last verse for the sixth time not far from the beehives, and when they had fin
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ished they bowed and curtsied to the bees. But there wasn’t a single bee to be seen. Usually on a fine morning they were going in and out to fetch and store their honey but today stillness and silence enveloped the hives and the children looked anxiously at Ezra. He was looking grave but not despairing. He bowed again and stepped forward, motioning to the children to come with him.
“Madam queens and noble bees,” he said, “these children be good children and if they have offended you they be sorry for it. They be proper grateful for your protection and guidance. Madam queens and noble bees, us do beg yee to show us you ain’t offended.”
They waited anxiously and then a brown body appeared at the entrance to the first hive, and then another and another and another from the other hives. Four brown bees, their heads crowned with antennae and many gleaming eyes, winged like the seraphim, sheathed swords in their tails, the four royal and angelic warriors seeming to hover there as though for the children to look at them.
“Don’t yee touch now!” whispered Ezra.
But the children knew better for they remembered about the sheathed swords. “What does it feel like to be stung by a bee?” asked Timothy.
“It’s as though the fire of the sun pierced you,” said Ezra. “The whole limb burns. Ah, there they go!”
The four bees zoomed up, then dived joyously into the scented air like swimmers diving into the sea. Then
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the airy traffic began once more, bees coming and going in ones and twos and threes, the returning ones gold- dusted with pollen and with their honey bags weighed down with treasure.
“They comes and goes all the while,” said Ezra, “they likes to be with each other. A lost bee will die of loneliness. There be as many as sixty or seventy thousand bees in a hive, children. ’Tis a regular city in there with houses and streets and nurseries, and thousands of larders for the honey and bee-bread, all built of sweet- smellin’ wax. There be workers and nurses for the children, guards at the gate and ladies-in-waiting for the royal family. At the heart of it all be the queen on her throne and the princesses in their cradles singing the song of the queens. There’s nothing more wonderful in all the world, children, than a beehive.”
“Isn’t there a king?” asked Robert.
“For a short while,” said Ezra. “He be one of the drones, but only king for a moment. The drones are the bee-men and they don’t never go out to work. In the bee world ’tis t’other way round from what it be in our world, for ’tis the women, the worker bees, what gathers the honey and the men what stays indoors. Fine roisterin’ fellows they be, wearing helmets of glittering eyes and forever drunk on honey. On her marriage day, and she chooses a fine sunny morning, the queen leaves the hive for the first time in her life and darts up into the blue sky. Up and up she flies, beyond the flight of the birds, beyond the tops of the tallest trees, up toward
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the sun, and the bee-men in their glistening helmets fly after her. But her flight is that swift that one by one they falls away and only the strongest among ’em, the best and noblest, follows toward the sun. Right up in the sky, beyond sight of every livin’ creature, the larks far below ’em, they dance together, king and queen for a moment. Then his small brown body falls down and down to the earth below, all his sparkling eyes dark in death.”
“Poor king!” cried Nan, nearly in tears. “Why must it be like that?”
“How should I know, maid? ’Tis the way of it.”
“And the queen?” asked Timothy.
“She comes lonely down from the sky, and lonely she goes to her palace in the middle of the city. Unless she leaves the hive with a swarm she will never see the sun again.” Ezra stepped back. “Our reverence to you, madam queens and noble bees,” he said, and the children bowed and curtsied.
Strawberry picking began in an awed silence, until Timothy asked, “Why do the bees swarm, Ezra?”
“If not frightened away by quarreling children, ’tis hard to tell,” said Ezra. “It seems that when they’ve brought the city to perfection they grows restless and leaves it. Some of the workers stay behind to look after the children but the rest flies away after the queen to find a new home. ’Tis a sort of adventure, this seeking for a new city. When the bee master catches up with ’em, with his skep in his hand, he’ll find ’em all hangin’
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from some tree in a cluster together and they be singin’ for joy. They don’t mind when he shakes ’em into the new hive. They settle down there and they build a new city as contented as can be. That’s enough for now, children, but there ain’t no end to the wonder of the bees and I’ll tell yee more another day.”
When the others were absorbed in their strawberry picking, chattering and singing, Nan said to Ezra, “I’ve a lot to tell you.”
“You have indeed, maid,” said Ezra severely. “You’ve kept a lot to yourself that you should have told me.” He straightened himself. “Robert, Timot
hy and Betsy,” he said loudly above their uproar, “I can’t stoop well with this here wooden leg so I be going to sit outside the kitchen door and hull the berries as you bring ’em to me. An’ I shall need Nan to help me. Keep at it, children, keep at it.”
He stumped off down the garden path and he and Nan settled themselves on two chairs outside the kitchen door. “Now, maid,” he said, “what’s worrying yee?”
“A book I found hidden in the cupboard in my parlor,” said Nan. “Uncle Ambrose said he’d found Lady Alicia’s books there so it must have been with them. But it isn’t one of hers. It’s Emma Cobley’s. It’s a horrid book, Ezra. It’s full of spells and they are nearly all nasty.”
“Fetch it out here,” said Ezra and Nan fetched it. But Ezra, it appeared, had never learned to read and he asked her to read the spells aloud to him.
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Nan began to tremble. “I can’t read them out loud, Ezra,” she said. “They’re too nasty.”
“How be I to know what they be if yee don’t read ’em?” asked Ezra. “They won’t seem so bad read out loud in sunshine.”
So Nan read them and with Ezra beside her and the smell of warm strawberries in her nose they did not seem so bad.
“Ah,” said Ezra when she had finished. “Two can play at that there game.”
“How do you mean, Ezra?”
“I mean, maid, that I know a spell or two meself. Now read again that spell for making a person dumb, and the one for causing a man to get lost in a far place.” Nan read them again and when he had heard them twice Ezra repeated them word for word. “How you remember things, Ezra!” she said admiringly.
“Ah!” said Ezra. “I ain’t never wanted to learn to read. Book learning destroys the memory.”
“Ezra, how do you think Lady Alicia got hold of Emma’s book?” asked Nan.
“How should I know, maid? Better ask Lady Alicia.” “Ezra, the day I found the book I thought I saw Lady Alicia in the little mirror. And then I thought I saw Emma. First one and then the other and they both looked young. Could I have seen them, Ezra?”
“Likely,” said Ezra. “Both after the same man, they was, and hating one another like poison. Now don’t you worrit no more, maid. Leave Emma to me.”
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“What are you going to do, Ezra?”
“Tomorrow I be taking you children in the pony cart to Pizzleton. There be a nice little shop at Pizzleton and I mean to do a bit of shopping.”
“But why, Ezra?”
“I said, maid, leave it to me.”
“Pizzleton,” said Nan. “Isn’t that where Daft Davie lived when he was a little boy?”
“Yes, maid. Now don’t yee ask no more questions. You get on with hulling them berries.”
At dinnertime Uncle Ambrose adjusted his spectacles and regarded the hard-boiled eggs with disfavor. “Ezra, you know my personal abhorrence of hard-boiled eggs. Have you nothing more palatable to offer me?”
“No, sir,” said Ezra, and moving to the dining room window, which he always kept shut now because of Tom Biddle opposite hearing what they said, he opened it wide. “There be nothing in the larder,” he said loudly. “These children eat us out of house and home. Have I your permission to go shopping in town tomorrow? I could take the cart, sir, and the children. Get ’em out of your way. And maybe, sir, for one more day they could be excused their preparation? They will have worked in the morning and they be still peaky-looking. Also, sir, we be that low in victuals that the shopping is likely to take some time.”
“Very well,” said Uncle Ambrose testily. “I shall never get these children educated, but anything to de
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liver me from a diet of hard-boiled eggs. And shut that window, Ezra. If there’s one thing I dislike more than hard-boiled eggs it is a draft down the back of my neck.”
Ezra complied with the request, left the room and returned with one sardine on a plate which he placed before Uncle Ambrose. “Hector’s, sir,” he said, “and the last.”
“I do not wish to deprive Hector,” said Uncle Ambrose. But actually he did not get the chance, for Hector on his shoulder said, “Hick!” very loudly, shot out a pellet in Ezra’s face, leaned over and grabbed the fish.
“Pass me the lettuce,” said Uncle Ambrose. “I doubt if Diogenes ate anything but grass and who am I that I should fare better than one of the greatest philosophers of all time?”
“Was Diogenes a Greek?” asked Timothy.
“He was,” said Uncle Ambrose. “Pass me the salad dressing.”
“I’ve heard of him,” said Robert. “Didn’t he live in a tub?”
“He did.”
“Why, Uncle Ambrose?”
“He desired peace and quiet,” said Uncle Ambrose. “Possibly he had nephews and nieces. Pepper and salt, please.”
He seemed put out and after dinner, disappeared into the library. But after tea he and Hector entered the kitchen, where Ezra, watched by the children, was stirring the jam. “I shall be obliged, Ezra,” he said,
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holding out a letter, “if you will take this to the Manor. I shall continue stirring the jam in your place. Be so good as to lend me your apron.”
It was Ezra’s turn to be put out. “Could I take your letter later, sir?” he asked.
“Why later?” asked Uncle Ambrose.
“The strawberries, sir. At any moment now they will become jam.”
“And do you think I have not sufficient intelligence to know when strawberries become jam?” asked Uncle Ambrose haughtily. “My eyesight and my olfactory organs are as yet unaffected by old age. I shall be obliged, Ezra, if you will hand me your apron.”
Reluctantly Ezra took off his apron and Nan tied it around Uncle Ambrose.
“You try it on a saucer, sir,” said Ezra.
“Try what on a saucer?”
“The jam, sir. When the jam jells ’tis jam.”
“I am obliged to you for the information,” said Uncle Ambrose. “The fresh air, Ezra, will do you good.”
Ezra left looking rather worried. Uncle Ambrose straightened his shoulders, adjusted his glasses and gripped the wooden spoon. Hector, on his shoulder, leaned over to regard the bubbling jam. The children gathered around. “Don’t let it stick to the bottom,” whispered Nan.
“Is your letter to Lady Alicia, Uncle Ambrose?” asked Robert.
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“Is there anyone else at the Manor with whom I should be likely to communicate?” asked Uncle Ambrose shortly. He sniffed. “Nan, should you say there is a subtle change in the aroma of this mixture?”
“Not yet,” said Nan.
“Then oblige me by telling me once again of this likeness which the boys fancied they observed between the tapestry in Lady Alicia’s boudoir and the wall painting in the cave of—what was the unfortunate gentleman’s name?”
“Daft Davie,” said Nan. “And they didn’t fancy the likeness. I saw the painting too and it’s the same picture.”
“A most remarkable coincidence,” said Uncle Ambrose. “Thank you.”
Hector, who had been all this while peering into the jam, suddenly reared up and flapped his wings. “WTioo/” he shouted warningly.
“The jam’s jammed!” yelled Robert.
Uncle Ambrose hastily pulled the saucepan off the heat and Timothy leapt for a saucer. They dropped a little liquid into it and it set like glue.
“A little overcooked?” asked Uncle Ambrose anxiously.
“That’s a fault on the right side,” said Nan soothingly. “Let’s pour it into the pots quickly while it will still pour.”
They did so and then because it was a whole holiday today they went into the library and Uncle Ambrose
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/> read to them and told them stories until they heard Ezra come back. The others went out to welcome him but Timothy lingered behind, laying a hand on Uncle Ambrose’s knee. “I saw him,” he said.
“Saw whom?” asked Uncle Ambrose.
“Pan,” said Timothy, and he told Uncle Ambrose about the marvelous music, and the man he had seen sitting under the beech tree in the moonlight. When he had finished he trembled because he was so afraid that Uncle Ambrose would say “nonsense.” He was taking a risk which Robert last night had not dared to take. But then Uncle Ambrose was not like other grownups. He rumpled Timothy’s hair and then most surprisingly he kissed him. “Now go along and have your supper,” he said.
They all had their supper in bed, so that they would get to sleep early, and it was a very good supper, but Ezra seemed a bit glum when he brought it up.
“I’m sorry I said this morning that Uncle Ambrose wouldn’t help us with the jam,” said Nan. “He did, and he looked wonderful while he was doing it.”
“Huh,” said Ezra. “Handsome is as handsome does and come the morning there’ll be no way of getting that jam out of them pots without taking a hatchet to ’em. Be there anything more that you fancy?”
12
Tlie Little Fi^ ures
Next day after dinner Ezra left the children to do the washing up by themselves while he went, he said, to tog himself up. This they thought was mean of him. Didn’t they have to tog themselves up? They did a very sketchy wash-up, changed into clean frocks and sailor suits, brushed Absolom and then found to their astonishment that Ezra, Rob-Roy and the cart were already waiting for them outside the front door. Ezra was wearing his bunchy coat and the mustard waistcoat, but a little awry as though he had got into them in a hurry, and carrying on quite a friendly conversation
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THE LITTLE FIGURES 233
with Tom Biddle, who was sitting on his Windsor chair as usual, just as though there had been no unpleasant occurrence in the wood two days ago.