general feeling that it would hurt some. But desperate diseases
require desperate remedies, and Mr. Middlerib was willing to undergo
any amount of suffering if it would cure his rheumatism.

He contracted with Master Middlerib for a limited supply of bees;
humming and buzzing about in the summer air, Mr. Middlerib did not
know how to get them. He felt, however, that he could safely depend
upon the instincts and methods of boyhood. He knew that if there was
any way in heaven whereby the shyest bee that ever lifted a two
hundred pound man off the clover could be induced to enter a wide-
mouthed glass bottle, his son knew that way.

For the small sum of one dime Master Middlerib agreed to procure
several, to wit: six bees, sex and age not specified; but, as Mr.
Middlerib was left in uncertainty as to the race, it was made
obligatory upon the contractor to have three of them honey and three
humble, or, in the generally accepted vernacular, bumblebees. Mr. M.
did not tell his son what he wanted those bees for, and the boy went
off on his mission with his head so full of astonishment that it
fairly whirled. Evening brings all home, and the last rays of the
declining sun fell upon Master Middlerib with a short, wide-mouthed
bottle comfortably populated with hot, ill-natured bees, and Mr.
Middlerib and a dime. The dime and the bottle changed hands. Mr.
Middlerib put the bottle in his coat pocket and went into the house
eyeing everybody he met very suspiciously, as though he had made up
his mind to sting to death the first person who said "bee" to him. He
confided his guilty secret to none of his family. He hid his bees in
his bedroom, and as he looked at them just before putting them away
he half wished the experiment was safely over. He wished the
imprisoned bees did not look so hot and cross. With exquisite care he