air-legs, and they fairly reeled
about in the sun. As for me, I sat here and there, on hillocks and stones,
among ferns, and white cornels, and honey-bees, and bobolinks. I was the
only still thing in the fields. I waited so long in each spot, that it was
like being transplanted when I moved myself to the north or the south. And
I discovered a few things in each country in which I lived. For one thing,
I observed that the little busy bee is not busy all the while; that he
does a great amount of aimless, idle snuffing and tasting of all sorts of
things besides flowers; especially he indulges in a running accompaniment
of gymnastics among the grass-stalks, which cannot possibly have anything
to do with honey. I watched one fellow to-day through a series of positive
trapeze movements from top to bottom and bottom to top of a grass-tangle.
When he got through he shook himself, and smoothed off his legs exactly as
the circus-men do. Then he took a long pull at a clover well.

"Ah, the clover! Dearest! you should have seen how it swung to-day. The
stupidest person in the world could not have helped thinking that it kept
time to invisible band-playing, and was trying to catch hold of the
buttercups. I lay down at full length and looked off through the stems,
and then I saw for the first time how close they were, and that they
constantly swayed and touched, and sometimes locked fast together for a
second. Stately as a minuet it looked, but joyous and loving as the
wildest waltz I ever danced in your arms, my darling. Oh, how dare we
presume to be so sure that the flowers are not glad as we are glad! On
such a day as to-day I never doubt it; and I picked one as reverently and
hesitatingly as I would ask the Queen of the Fairies home to tea if I met
her in a wood.

"Laughing, are you, darling? Yes, I know it. Poor soul! You cannot help
being a man, I suppose. Nor would I have you help it, my great, strong,
glorious one! How I adore the things which you do, which I could not do.
Oh, my sweet master! Never fear that I do you less reverence than I
should. All the same, I lie back on my ferny hillock, and look you in the
eye, and ask you what you think would become of you if you had no little
one of my kind to bring you honey! And when I say this--you--ah, my
darling, now there are tears in my eyes, and the moonlight grows dim. I
cannot bear the thinking what you would do when I said those words!
Good-night! Perhaps in my sleep I wi