his fingers and not get into trouble. The first bee Mr. Middlerib got
was a little brown honey-bee, that wouldn't weigh half an ounce if
you picked him up by the ears, but if you lifted him by the hind leg
would weigh as much as the last end of a bay mule. Mr. Middlerib
could not repress a groan.

"What's the matter with you?" sleepily asked his wife.

It was very hard for Mr. Middlerib to say he only felt hot, but he
did it. He didn't have to lie about it, either. He did feel very hot
indeed--about eighty-six all over, and one hundred and ninety-seven
on the end of his thumb. He reversed the bee and pressed the warlike
terminus of it firmly against the rheumatic knee.

It didn't hurt so badly as he thought it would.

It didn't hurt at all.

Then Mr. Middlerib remembered that when the honey-bee stabs a human
foe it generally leaves its harpoon in the wound, and the invalid
knew that the only thing this bee had to sting with was doing its
work at the end of his thumb.

He reached his arm out from under the sheets and dropped this
disabled atom of rheumatism liniment on the carpet. Then, after a
second of blank wonder, he began to feel round for the bottle, and
wished he knew what he did with it.

In the meantime strange things had been going on. When he caught hold
of the first bee, Mr. Middlerib, for reasons, drew it out in such