Pretty soon the bee flew up and circled and went down and lit on a rock and walked around. Then it flew out over the river and back and zigzagged off. Then two or three other bees tried the flower for honey, and each time Jibby Jones put his nose close to it and said, “No; not this one.” After a while a bee lit on the flower that seemed to satisfy Jibby. “Now I can tell you,” he said. “You watch this bee when it flies away.” So we did. When it got enough honey, it flew into the air and made a bee-line off for somewhere. Jibby pulled a pocket compass out of his pants pocket. “A bit west of south-west-by-west,” he said. “Any time you want to find that bee tree you start from here and go just west of south-west-by-west and you’ll find it. That bee was going home.” “How did you know that one was going home and the others were not?” Wampus asked. “Was that a pilot bee?” “Maybe it was,” said Jibby. “Well, how did you know it was a pilot bee, then?” asked Skippy. “Maybe I could smell the difference,” Jibby said. “I’ve got a lot of nose; it ought to be good for something.” So we all laughed, but we didn’t know whether Jibby was fooling or in earnest. That was the way he was. Sometimes he fooled just for the fun of it, and sometimes he was in earnest. We could never quite make out which he was, but we had found out one thing--if we waited long enough and didn’t keep joshing him too much, he always ended up by telling us what the truth was. So now Wampus sort of laughed. “Aw, quit!” he said. “You can’t smell like that; you can’t smell the difference between one kind of bee and another kind. Nobody can; I never heard such nonsense. I bet even my Uncle Oscar can’t, and he knows just about everything.” “Has he got a nose like mine?” Jibby asked. Well, Wampus couldn’t say he had, because nobody we knew had a nose like Jibby. There were no other noses like it. It was the biggest and thinnest nose anybody ever saw. “No,” Wampus said, “Uncle Oscar’s nose is just a common nose.” “And does he exercise it regular?” Jibby asked. “What do you mean by ‘exercise it regular’?” Wampus asked. “Why, exercise it right along,” said Jibby. “Like you exercise your arms and legs if you want to make them good for what they are good for. Or like you would exercise your eyes if you wanted them to be good at seeing things. Or your ears if you wanted them to be ’cute at hearing things. You know you can do that, don’t you?” “How?” asked Skippy. “Well, the Indians did it,” said Jibby. “They began when they were young, and they exercised their ears and their eyes, and soon they could hear the grass grow and see a hair as far as you can see a fishpole. You can exercise your nose the same way, can’t you?” “Well, it sounds sort of reasonable,” said Tad Willing. “Of course, it sounds reasonable,” Jibby said, as pleasant as could be. “Can you do this?”