So Elsie, fresh and clean, dancing and singing up the lane, swinging her pail of crystal water, the loveliest sight in the whole lovely landscape, came in view of the house where they were staying. And no sooner had she caught a glimpse of her mother on the porch than, eager to tell her funny experience, she ran forward in pleasant excitement, crying out:
“Oh, mamma! Such a queer thing – Oh, Oh, it was an engine, the biggest, biggest you ever saw – and – and it stepped on my nose – I mean it was only a bumble-bee and – it – it almost ran right over me – ”
“Isn’t my little girl somewhat mixed in her speech!” smiled her mother as Elsie paused for breath.
“I – I guess I – I am!” Elsie faltered. “But then, I’m so excited!”
“Yes, you are excited,” smiled her mother, putting her arm around her shoulders and walking with her to the kitchen. “And when you are calm you may tell me all about it.”
So Elsie carried the pail of water to the sink and set it on its shelf. And when she had worked off her surplus energy in this way she felt sober enough to tell her story clearly, and she did so, snuggled in her mother’s arms in the hammock on the porch. She finished by saying:
“Wasn’t that a funny thing, mamma, that I should dream that the bumble-bee was an engine just going to run over me!”
Then the really important part of the story began. Her mother answered:
II
WHAT THE BEE WANTED OF ELSIE’S NOSE
“Yes, it may seem funny, but it is natural. When you were asleep you heard the bee buzzing and rumbling, and the sound reminded you of an engine, so you began to picture an engine in your mind, and with the queer mixture of fact and fancy that are common to dreams you thought it was coming right at you. And it was only a bumble-bee taking a look at your little red-and-white nose.”
Elsie clapped her hands and laughed. Then she asked:
“What did the bee want to see my nose for, mamma?”
“He thought, perhaps, that it was some new kind of a bud, and he wished to examine it,” Mrs. Edson smiled. “A little girl’s face is very much like a pretty flower. Your hair was tumbled all about your head, I suppose, and your little rosebud of a nose, peeking through, attracted the bee.”
At this idea Elsie laughed again, joyously.
“But, mamma,” she asked, “why should the bee wish to see my nose, even if he did think it might be a flower? Do bees eat flowers, mamma?”
Elsie’s mother threw her a sudden look that was almost a startled one. Then she hugged her close and kissed her.
“What a great big little girl you are getting to be, darling!” she said, gazing fondly at her. This did not seem to Elsie much like an answer to her question, and she fixed her eyes brightly on her mother’s face as if waiting for her to go on with her words. But her mother only said: “I scarcely realized that you were no longer my little baby-girl, and that you were instead almost a young lady, old enough to understand many new things, among them the reason why a bee goes to flowers.”
She paused again, looking at her big little girl wistfully. She was thinking: “Elsie has begun to be a woman now, and I shall soon, all too soon, lose my baby-girl, for she will grow up and marry and go away to a home of her own and have a little girl like herself, just as I have had her!”
This made her feel sad, but she said nothing to Elsie of this feeling, for she would not be able to understand it and it would only make her feel sad too. By and by she would tell her what it meant to have a husband and children and home of her own, after her parents were passed away, and she must begin to prepare her for this knowledge now. So, finally, she said:
“No, darling, bees do not eat flowers, though they eat a part of them, or a product of them. The most important thing that they visit flowers for, as far as the world is concerned, is to fertilize them.”
“Fer-fer-ilize!” stammered Elsie. “What is that, mamma?”
“Not ferferilize, darling, but fertilize, fer-til-ize, which means to make rich, or fruitful. As strange as it may seem the bees and other insects are of vast importance to men – sh-h!”
She suddenly held up her hand, motioning for silence, and Elsie, wondering what was coming, followed her mother’s pointing finger with her eyes. What she saw was a bee hovering over a bright yellow buttercup that grew almost within reach of where she sat.
“Watch him!” whispered her mother.
Elsie did so, holding her breath for fear of scaring him away. He alighted on the flower, crawled clumsily over it for a second or two, pausing now and then to bury his head in the blossom, but he did not do anything else, that Elsie could see, except to tumble about very awkwardly and funnily and then fly away to another buttercup and repeat the operation. Elsie drew a long breath and looked at her mother inquiringly.
“It did not seem as if he did much, did it, dearie!” she said in answer to the look. “But in reality he did a great deal, for he – what shall I say – married? Yes, married! The bee actually married those two buttercups together, so that next season, when these two flowers, the papa and mamma, are dead and gone, there will spring up and grow other buttercups, baby-plants, the children of these two. If it were not for the bee, or other insects, we should have no bright flowers in the world.”
“Oh!” Elsie’s eyes opened wide. She thought a moment, then, “Could he marry my nose to anything?” she burst forth. But seeing the absurdity of the notion before the words were fairly out of her mouth she joined in her mother’s laughter over it.
“No, dearie, of course not. It is only flowers that bees marry together. And not the least strange thing about it is that they do not know they are doing so.”
“Don’t know what they are doing!” exclaimed Elsie.
“Oh, yes, they know what they are doing for themselves, but they can’t have the least notion of what they are doing for the flowers and indeed for the whole world! Without plants there could be no life of any kind on earth. It is the plants that produce life. Through them come animals, and even men and women and little girls. The plants feed on the earth and air, which men and animals cannot do. A man or a lamb cannot eat the soil or live on air, but a plant lives by eating the minerals and gases and water of the earth and air, and the man and the lamb eat the plants, and so are able to live. Without the plants we could not exist, and without the insects, which fertilize the plants, so that they can grow, the plants themselves would soon die. Don’t you think now that what the bee did was quite an important matter, even if it did seem so trivial?”
“Ye-yes,” Elsie hesitated. She did not yet grasp the full depth of her mother’s words. They meant so much! “But,” she continued, her bright eyes eagerly turned on her mother’s face, “we don’t eat the buttercup, mamma, do we?”
“No, sweetie, but we do eat very gladly a part of it, and that is the part that the bee visited the flower for, and which he took away as his fee for marrying the two. Can you guess what it is?”
The idea of a bee performing a marriage between flowers and taking a fee for it was a little too much for Elsie, and when it was added that she and her mother ate this fee such a look of amazement came into her sweet face that her mother could not help smiling broadly.
“It is the honey, little girlie,” she said. “The bee takes the honey from the flower and carries it home to the hive, where he stores it up until he has a great mass of it, and then the bee-man gets it and sells it to the grocer, who sells it to us.”
“W-e-l-l!” said Elsie slowly, “if that isn’t strange!” She sat a moment thinking of this miracle, her mother watching her lovingly and considering what she ought to say next, for she had a great secret to tell her little daughter, a secret so great and important that much wise thought was required to study out just how to make it plain to a girl as young as Elsie. Besides, she was interested to know what Elsie herself would say next, for she was bringing her up to think logically, so that she might know always how to ask the right question at the right time, instead of the wrong one. And she was very much pleased when Elsie, instead of putting the last question first, as some little girls would have done, put the right one first by saying:
“But, mamma, how can flowers marry! And how can a bee possibly marry them?”
This was the right question to ask first, even if it was a kind of double-headed one, because this marriage was the first of the wonders that had amazed her, and the answer to it would lead logically to the fee and the honey eaten by people, and these questions would be easier to make plain after the first one was answered.