travel books: garden and looked after the bees in his spare time. Each grudgingly took orders from the other when off his own ground, and it was difficult to say which was headman of the estate. Edwards had the higher wage. Challinor had the cottage. Reginald had had Challinor longer, but was more afraid of Edwards. Challinor was a quick, black little man with quick, black eyes and a black waterfall moustache. He was really neither a bee-man nor a gardener by trade, he was just the handiest man of the neighbourhood, and he had become, anyhow to Reginald, a specialist in bees, not because he knew more about them than about flowers, tools or cows, but because other people, Reginald anyhow, knew less. Challinor wore black trousers, a black waistcoat with a brass watch-chain from which depended the badge of some secret society, and a grey shirt, rolled up to the elbows so that the bees could sting him better. `But of course,' said Reginald to Sylvia, `the idea really is to establish a mutual confidence with the bees. They go about saying to each other, "We can't sting a man like this, it wouldn't be fair. He trusts us. Let's sting the man Wellard instead."' `I suppose so, darling,' said Sylvia, and then, as Reginald still seemed to be waiting for something, gave her charming little laugh. `Darling, you are absurd. They haven't really stung you again, have they?' `No, Sylvia, no.' He looked at her almost unbelievable white arms, and added, `If a single bee ever dares to sting you, I'll brain him.' Edwards was a slow, heavy-footed, thick-fingered man. He would take a dozen young birches, which had been lying out for a week as they had come from the nurseryman's, with their roots exposed, dig a dozen holes books

Books > Old Books > Two People (1932)

Page 13

CHAPTER ONE

garden and looked after the bees in his spare time. Each grudgingly took orders from the other when off his own ground, and it was difficult to say which was headman of the estate. Edwards had the higher wage. Challinor had the cottage. Reginald had had Challinor longer, but was more afraid of Edwards.
Challinor was a quick, black little man with quick, black eyes and a black waterfall moustache. He was really neither a bee-man nor a gardener by trade, he was just the handiest man of the neighbourhood, and he had become, anyhow to Reginald, a specialist in bees, not because he knew more about them than about flowers, tools or cows, but because other people, Reginald anyhow, knew less. Challinor wore black trousers, a black waistcoat with a brass watch-chain from which depended the badge of some secret society, and a grey shirt, rolled up to the elbows so that the bees could sting him better.
`But of course,' said Reginald to Sylvia, `the idea really is to establish a mutual confidence with the bees. They go about saying to each other, "We can't sting a man like this, it wouldn't be fair. He trusts us. Let's sting the man Wellard instead."'
`I suppose so, darling,' said Sylvia, and then, as Reginald still seemed to be waiting for something, gave her charming little laugh. `Darling, you are absurd. They haven't really stung you again, have they?'
`No, Sylvia, no.' He looked at her almost unbelievable white arms, and added, `If a single bee ever dares to sting you, I'll brain him.'
Edwards was a slow, heavy-footed, thick-fingered man. He would take a dozen young birches, which had been lying out for a week as they had come from the nurseryman's, with their roots exposed, dig a dozen holes