y into that?"

"Right ahead!" answered the lady-bee.

Maya raised her little head and moved her pretty new wings.
Suddenly she felt the flying-board on which she had been sitting
sink down, while the ground seemed to be gliding away behind,
and the large green domes of the tree-tops seemed to be coming
toward her.

Her eyes sparkled, her heart rejoiced.

"I am flying," she cried. "It cannot be anything else. What I am
doing must be flying. Why, it's splendid, perfectly splendid!"

"Yes, you're flying," said the lady-bee, who had difficulty in
keeping up with the child. "Those are linden-trees, those toward
which we are flying, the lindens in our castle park. You can
always tell where our city is by those lindens. But you're
flying so fast, Maya."

"Fast?" said Maya. "How can one fly fast enough? Oh, how sweet
the sunshine smells!"

"No," replied her companion, who was rather out of breath, "it's
not the sunshine, it's the flowers that smell.-- But please,
don't go so fast, else I'll drop behind. Besides, at this pace
you won't observe things and be able to find your way back."

But little Maya transported by the sunshine and the joy of
living, did not hear. She felt as though she were darting like
an arrow through a green-shimmering sea of light, to greater and
greater splendor. The bright flowers seemed to call to her, the
still, sunlit distances lured her on, and the blue sky blessed
her joyous young flight.

"Never again will it be as beautiful as it is to-day," she
thought. "I _can't_ turn back. I can't think of anything except
the sun."

Beneath her the gay pictures kept changing, the peaceful
landscape slid by slowly, in broad stretches.

"The sun must be all of gold," thought the baby-bee.

Coming to a large garden, which seemed to rest in blossoming
clouds of cherry-tree, hawthorn, and lilacs, she let herself
down to earth, dead-tired, and dropped in a bed of red tulips,
where she held on to one of the big flowers. With a great sigh
of bliss she pressed herself against the blossom-wall and looked
up to the deep blue of the sky through the gleaming edges of the
flowers.

"Oh, how beautiful it is out here in the great world, a thousand
times more beautiful than in the dark hive. I'll never go back
there again to carry honey or make wax. No, indeed, I'll never
do that. I want to see and know the world in bloom. I am not
like the other bees, my heart is meant for pleasure and
surprises, experien