I am, as I have said, an apiarist in good standing, I
never realised that there were so many bees in the world. When they had
woven a flashing haze from one end of the desert street to the other,
there remained reserves enough to form knops and pendules on all
window-sills and gutter-ends, without diminishing the multitudes in the
three oozing bonnet-boxes, or drawing on the Fourth (Railway) Battalion
in charge of the station below. The prisoners in the waiting-rooms and
other places there cried out a great deal (I argued that they were dying
of the heat), and at regular intervals the stationmaster called and
called to a signalman who was not on duty, and the train whistled as it
drew nearer.

Then Penfentenyou, venal and adaptable politician of the type that
survives at the price of all the higher emotions, appeared at the window
of the house on my right, broken and congested with mirth, the woman
beside him, and the child in his arms. I saw his mouth open and shut, he
hollowed his hands round it, but the churr of the motor and the bees
drowned his words. He pointed dramatically across the street many times
and fell back, tears running down his face. I turned like a hooded
barbette in a heavy seaway (not knowing when my trousers would come out
of my socks again) through one hundred and eighty degrees, and in due
time bore on the village green. There was a salmon in the pond, rising
short at a cloud of midges to the tune of _Yip-i-addy_; but there was
none to gaff him. The swing-boats were empty, cocoa-nuts sat still on
their red sticks before white screens, and the gay-painted horses of the
giddy-go-rounds revolved riderless. All was melody, green turf, bright
water, and this greedy gambolling fish. When I had identified it by its
grey gills and binoculars as Lingnam, I prostrated myself before Allah
in that mirth which is more truly labour than any prayer. Then I turned
to the purple Penfentenyou at the window, and wiped my eyes on the
rug edge.

He raised the window half one cautious inch and bellowed through the
crack: 'Did you see _him_? Have they got _you_? I can see lots of
things from here. It's like a three-ring circus!'

'Can you see the station?' I replied, nodding toward the right rear
mudguard.

He twisted and craned sideways, but could not command that beautiful
view.

'No! What's it like?' he cried.

'Hell!' I shouted. The silver-haired woman frowned; so did Penfentenyou,
and, I think, apologised