sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

Buy a pup and your money will buy
Love unflinching that cannot lie--
Perfect passion and worship fed
By a kick in the ribs or a pat on the head.
Nevertheless it is hardly fair
To risk your heart for a dog to tear.

When the fourteen years which Nature permits
Are closing in asthma, or tumour, or fits,
And the vet's unspoken prescription runs
To lethal chambers or loaded guns,
Then you will find--it's your own affair
But... you've given your heart to a dog to tear.

When the body that lived at your single will
When the whimper of welcome is stilled (how still!)
When the spirit that answered your every mood
Is gone wherever it goes--for good,
You will discover how much you care,
And will give your heart to a dog to tear!

We've sorrow enough in the natural way,
When it comes to burying Christian clay.
Our loves are not given, but only lent,
At compound interest of cent per cent.
Though it is not always the case, I believe,
That the longer we've kept 'em, the more do we grieve:
For, when debts are payable, right or wrong,
A short-time loan is as bad as a long
So why in Heaven (before we are there!)
Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?

THE MOTHER HIVE

If the stock had not been old and overcrowded, the Wax-moth would never
have entered; but where bees are too thick on the comb there must be
sickness or parasites. The heat of the hive had risen with the June
honey-flow, and though the farmers worked, until their wings ached, to
keep people cool, everybody suffered.

A young bee crawled up the greasy trampled alighting-board. "Excuse me,"
she began, "but it's my first honey-flight. Could you kindly tell me if
this is my--"

"--own hive?" the Guard snapped. "Yes! Buzz in, and be foul-brooded to
you! Next!"

"Shame!" cried half a dozen old workers with worn wings and nerves, and
there was a scuffle and a hum.

The little grey Wax-moth, pressed close in a crack in the
alighting-board, had waited this chance all day. She scuttled in like a
ghost, and, knowing the senior bees would turn her out at once, dodged
into a brood-frame, where youngsters who had not yet seen the winds blow
or the flowers nod discussed life. Here she was safe