"What did the bee 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 within reach of where she sat. "Watch him!" whispered her mother. Elsie did so, holding her breath for fear of scaring him away. He alighted on the flower, crawled clumsily over it for a second or two, pausing now and then to bury his head in the blossom, but he did not do anything else, that Elsie could see, except to tumble about very awkwardly and funnily and then fly away to another buttercup and repeat the operation. Elsie drew a long breath and looked at her mother inquiringly.