"In the winter, when all the flowers are dead, the experienced Bee Keeper places before His hive a saucer of beer and treacle to sustain the inmates during the frost. And some of the less active bees, who have not used their wings, but have heard about honey, taste the compound, and finding it wonderfully sustaining and exactly suited to their aspirations, they religiously store it, dark and sticky, in waxen cells, as if it were what they genuinely believe it to be--the purest honey. "But the other surly, unsympathetic bees with worn-out wings contend that honey is not come by as easily as that: that you must fly far, and work hard, and penetrate many flower-cups to acquire it. This naturally arouses the indignation of the beer and treacle gatherers. "And the Bee Keeper as He passes His hive hears His little people buzzing within, and--smiles."--M. N. "And now," said Aunt Harriet, the same evening,--"now that we have made Mr. Stirling's acquaintance and been to tea with him, and may expect to see him frequently, I think we ought to take a little course of his books. What do you say, Maria? Eh! Annette? You seem strangely apathetic and inert this evening, my dear. So different from me at your age. I was gaiety and energy itself until my health failed. You might read aloud some extracts from _The Magnet_, instead of the _Times_. It is a book which none of us can afford to disregard. How I cried over it when it came out! I wrote to him after I had finished it, even though I did not know him. Authors like it, don't they, Maria? I felt very audacious, but I am a child of impulse. I have never been able to bind myself down with conventional ideas as I see others do. I felt I simply must tell him what that book had been to me, what it had done for me, coming like a ray of light into a darkened room." Mrs. Stoddart had read aloud _The Magnet_ to Annette at Teneriffe, and it was intimately associated with her slow reawakening to life. It had had a part, and not a small part, in sending her back humbled and contrite to her aunts. But she felt a deep repugnance to the thought of hearing their comments upon it. She took the offered book reluctantly, but Aunt Harriet's long thin finger was already pointing to a paragraph. "Begin at 'How we follow Self at first,' the top of the page," she said. And she leaned back among her cushions. Aunt Maria took up her knitting, and Annette began to read:--