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 w