The bent, small figure of the old man, with his gray hair and bald spot shining in the sun, was visible near the door of a straw-thatched structure situated among the lindens. When he heard the creaking of the gate, the old man looked up, and wiping his heated, sweaty face with the flap of his shirt, and smiling with pleasure, came to meet the prince. In the apiary it was so comfortable, so pleasant, so warm, so free! The figure of the gray-haired old man, with thick wrinkles radiating from his eyes, and wearing wide shoes on his bare feet, as he came waddling along, good-naturedly and contentedly smiling, to welcome the prince to his own private possessions, was so ingenuously soothing that Nekhliudof for a moment forgot the trying impressions of the morning, and his cherished dream came vividly up before him. He already saw all his peasants just as prosperous and contented as the old man Dutlof, and all smiling soothingly and pleasantly upon him, because to him alone they were indebted for their prosperity and happiness. "Would you like a net, your excellency? The bees are angry now," said the old man, taking down from the fence a dirty gingham bag fragrant of honey, and handing it to the prince. "The bees know me, and don't sting," he added, with the pleasant smile that rarely left his handsome sunburned face. "I don't need it either. Well, are they swarming yet?" asked Nekhliudof, also smiling, though without knowing why. "Yes, they are swarming, father, Mitri Mikolayévitch,"[45] replied the old man, throwing an expression of peculiar endearment into this form of addressing his bárin by his name and patronymic. "They have only just begun to swarm; it has been a cold spring, you know." [Footnote 45: _bátiushka_; Mitri Mikolayévitch, rustic for Dmitri Nikolayévitch.] "I have just been reading in a book," began Nekhliudof, defending himself from a bee which had got entangled in his hair, and was buzzing under his ear, "that if the wax stands straight on the bars, then the bees swarm earlier. Therefore such hives as are made of boards ... with cross-b--" "You don't want to gesticulate; that makes it worse," said the little old man. "Now don't you think you had better put on the net?" Nekhliudof felt a sharp pain, but by some sort of childish egotism he did not wish to give in to it; and so, once more refusing the bag, continued to talk with the old man about the construction of hives, about which he had read in "Maison Rustique," and which, according to his idea, ought to be made twice as large. But another bee stung him in the neck, and he lost the thread of his discourse and stopped short in the midst of it.