Mary was in the room where the glass bee-houses are, and I was in an adjoining room, with the door between the two open. As I sat peering through my big microscope, I seemed to hear a curious unusual sound from the bee-room, a sort of piping rather high-pitched but muffled. Perhaps it was Mary trying a new song. She has a good assortment of noises. But now came another sound; lower-pitched but louder than the other; a trumpet-call, only of course not as loud as the soldiers' trumpets or the ones on the stage when the King is about to come in. Then the shrill piping again; and again the trumpet answer. And finally a third and new sound, but this last unmistakably a Mary sound. And with it came the dear girl herself, with her hair standing on--well, no, I cannot truthfully say standing on end, but trying to. And her eyes shooting sparks and her mouth open and her hands up. "The bees," she gasped, "the bees are doing it!" There was no doubt of what "it" meant. It was this sounding of pipes and trumpets; these battle calls. I leaped to my feet; that is, if an elderly professor, who has certain twinges in his joints occasionally, can really leap. Anyway I knocked over my chair--and precious near my microscope--in getting up, and started for the bees. And that shows the high degree of my excitement. But never before in all the years I had played with bees had I heard the trumpet challenges of queen bees to the death duel. Inside the cell was the new queen shut up in darkness, but ready and eager to come out, and piping her challenge. And outside, brave and fearless, if old and worn, was the mother queen trumpeting back her defiance. It was the spirit of the Amazons. And _what_ excitement in the hive! Simply frantic were the thousands of workers. We watched them racing about wildly; up, down, across, back; but mostly clustering in the bottom near the queen cell. And working industriously at the cell itself, a group of builders, strengthening and thickening the cell's walls especially at the closed lower end. They seemed to be, yes, they were, preventing the new queen inside from coming out. She was probably gnawing away with her trowel-like jaws at the soft wax from the inside, while they were putting on more wax and keeping her a prisoner. This went on for two or three days. The piping and trumpeting kept up intermittently, and the thickening of the cell constantly. Until the time came! And now I am going to disappoint you dreadfully. But much less than Mary and I were disappointed. We were not there when the time came! The bees were excited, I have said. Mary and I were excited, I have said. The bees put in _all_ their time being excited and watching the queen cell. We put in _most_ of ours. But we had to eat and we had to sleep. The bees didn't seem to. And so we missed the coming out. What a pity! How unfair to us! And to you.