Fancy was now kneeling beside the two inverted hives, one of which rested against her lap, for convenience in operating upon the contents.  She thrust her sleeves above her elbows, and inserted her small pink hand edgewise between each white lobe of honeycomb, performing the act so adroitly and gently as not to unseal a single cell.  Then cracking the piece off at the crown of the hive by a slight backward and forward movement, she lifted each portion as it was loosened into a large blue platter, placed on a bench at her side.

“Bother these little mortals!” said Geoffrey, who was holding the light to her, and giving his back an uneasy twist.  “I really think I may as well go indoors and take ’em out, poor things! for they won’t let me alone.  There’s two a stinging wi’ all their might now.  I’m sure I wonder their strength can last so long.”

“All right, friend; I’ll hold the candle whilst you are gone,” said Mr. Shiner, leisurely taking the light, and allowing Geoffrey to depart, which he did with his usual long paces.

He could hardly have gone round to the house-door when other footsteps were heard approaching the outbuilding; the tip of a finger appeared in the hole through which the wood latch was lifted, and Dick Dewy came in, having been all this time walking up and down the wood, vainly waiting for Shiner’s departure.

Fancy looked up and welcomed him rather confusedly.  Shiner grasped the candlestick more firmly, and, lest doing this in silence should not imply to Dick with sufficient force that he was quite at home and cool, he sang invincibly—­

   “‘King Arthur he had three sons.’”

“Father here?” said Dick.

“Indoors, I think,” said Fancy, looking pleasantly at him.

Dick surveyed the scene, and did not seem inclined to hurry off just at that moment.  Shiner went on singing—­

   “’The miller was drown’d in his pond,
      The weaver was hung in his yarn,
   And the d—–­ ran away with the little tail-or,
      With the broadcloth under his arm.’”

“That’s a terrible crippled rhyme, if that’s your rhyme!” said Dick, with a grain of superciliousness in his tone.

“It’s no use your complaining to me about the rhyme!” said Mr. Shiner.  “You must go to the man that made it.”

Fancy by this time had acquired confidence.

“Taste a bit, Mr. Dewy,” she said, holding up to him a small circular piece of honeycomb that had been the last in the row of layers, remaining still on her knees and flinging back her head to look in his face; “and then I’ll taste a bit too.”

“And I, if you please,” said Mr. Shiner.  Nevertheless the farmer looked superior, as if he could even now hardly join the trifling from very importance of station; and after receiving the honeycomb from Fancy, he turned it over in his hand till the cells began to be crushed, and the liquid honey ran down from his fingers in a thin string.