Ch. 9: Dymchurch Flit

The Bee Boy's Song

Bees! Bees! Hark to your bees!
'Hide from your neighbours as much as you please,
But all that has happened, to us you must tell,
Or else we will give you no honey to sell!'

A Maiden in her glory,
Upon her wedding-day,
Must tell her Bees the story,
Or else they'll fly away.
Fly away - die away -
Dwindle down and leave you!
But if you don't deceive your Bees,
Your Bees will not deceive you.

Marriage, birth or buryin',
News across the seas,
All you're sad or merry in,
You must tell the Bees.
Tell 'em coming in an' out,
Where the Fanners fan,
'Cause the Bees are justabout
As curious as a man!

Don't you wait where trees are,
When the lightnings play;
Nor don't you hate where Bees are,
Or else they'll pine away.
Pine away - dwine away -
Anything to leave you!
But if you never grieve your Bees,
Your Bees'll never grieve you!

just at dusk, a soft September rain began to fall on the
hop-pickers. The mothers wheeled the bouncing perambulators
out of the gardens; bins were put away, and
tally-books made up. The young couples strolled home,
two to each umbrella, and the single men walked behind
them laughing. Dan and Una, who had been picking
after their lessons, marched off to roast potatoes at the
oast-house, where old Hobden, with Blue-eyed Bess, his
lurcher dog, lived all the month through, drying the hops.

They settled themselves, as usual, on the sack-strewn
cot in front of the fires, and, when Hobden drew up the
shutter, stared, as usual, at the flameless bed of coals
spouting its heat up the dark well of the old-fashioned
roundel. Slowly he cracked off a few fresh pieces of coal,
packed them, with fingers that never flinched, exactly
where they would do most good; slowly he reached
behind him till Dan tilted the potatoes into his iron scoop
of a hand; carefully he arranged them round the fire, and
then stood for a moment, black against the glare. As he
closed the shutter, the oast-house seemed dark before
the day's end, and he lit the candle in the lanthorn. The
children liked all these things because they knew them so well.

The Bee Boy, Hobden's son, who is not quite right in
his head, though he can do anything with bees, slipped
in like a shadow. They only guessed it when Bess's
stump-tail wagged against them.

A big voice began singing outside in the drizzle:

'Old Mother Laidinwool had nigh twelve months been dead,
She heard the hops were doin' well, and then popped up her head.'

'There can't be two people made to holler like that!'
cried old Hobden, wheeling round.

'For, says she, "The boys I've picked with when I