THE next time Jamie answered the telephone he got his call to the hospital. At two o’clock the following day he again boarded the trolley for the city and with no difficulty whatever made his way to one of its largest hospitals. Almost immediately he was shown to the room of the Bee Master, a big room where the sun shone in and the wind played through and the air was tinged with the perfume from a bowl of yellow roses. The instant Jamie saw those roses he realized that if they were not from the bush that grew beside Margaret Cameron’s door, they were from some other bush that belonged to the identical family and species. The yellow of the roses, the faint sweetness of their perfume, was in his nostrils as he rounded the screen by the bedside and stood facing the Bee Master.

Exactly what he had expected to see, he did not know. What he did see almost broke his heart. The man whom he had supported to the davenport, whom he had helped to the ambulance, had been ill; he had been in a sweat of agony; but he had been a man alive, with a chance for life manifest by the strength of his frame, the firmness of his muscles, the light in his eyes. It seemed to Jamie that ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/203 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/204 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/205 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/206 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/207 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/208 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/209 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/210 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/211 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/212 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/213 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/214 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/215 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/216 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/217 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/218 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/219 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/220 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/221 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/222 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/223 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/224 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/225 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/226 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/227 ​his right hand over his knee, and put his left arm around the little Scout and drew the child up to him closely. He dropped his lips against the tow hair, worked down through its bleached exterior, down through the dark strands underneath, and close to the small ear he brought his lips and whispered very reverently: “I say, ‘Just God!’”