Sidney now directed her own attention to the bumblebees. She went to the front gate and called Tom Watson's black boy, her strong, clear, fearless voice ringing out suddenly on the morning stillness. She had already hired him to come by promising to mend his Sunday jacket; if he would help her get rid of the bumblebees' nest. He accordingly appeared at once in answer to her call, which reached him in his master's stable, and he carried his fishing-rod in his hand, this also being a part of the bargain. He handed Sidney the rod, and taking from her a piece of rope, which she held in readiness, he went up the rough logs at the corner of the house, and ran over the roof as swiftly and as surely as any simian ancestors could have scampered through the green heights of the tropical forests. He let the rope down within Sidney's reach. She, meantime, had fetched a jug of boiling water from the kitchen, and when she had tied this uncorked vessel to the end of the rope, he drew it up again till the jug came close under the eaves and immediately below the dangerous bunch of gray gauze; whereupon he made the rope fast to one of the curling boards of the mossy roof, all according to Sidney's direction. This done, he sped over the roof again on his hands and knees and hastened down the wall for safety, knowing what was to come. Sidney barely gave him time to drop from the corner logs to the ground, and then, grasping the fishing-pole firmly in her strong hands, she gave the edge of the roof a sharp, quick blow. The bumblebees flew out in an angry cloud, but Sidney, the dauntless, stood at her post. She struck the roof another sharp, quick blow--and another, tap-tap-tap, like some gigantic and most industrious flicker. And forthwith the bumblebees began to go zip-zip-zip--straight into the steaming mouth of the crater. It was a short shrift, and, after it, a simple matter to punch down the nest itself with the fishing pole when the last bumblebee was drowned. That ended Sidney's interest in the programme, but the negro boy was still curious, so that he took the jug into the middle of the big road to pour out its contents, and he was much gratified, with the cruelty of his age and sex, to find something like a quart of boiled bumblebees. Sidney, free now from pressing domestic affairs, bustled into the room where Doris sat undisturbed, singing softly over her sewing. "I must go by Tom Watson's the first thing," Sidney said, putting on her bonnet, settling her ball of yarn under her left arm, and beginning to knit. "Anne seems to be at the end of her row, poor soul. I don't believe that Tom notices anybody's coming or going. I'm sure he doesn't mine. He just sits there with his awful eyes wandering up and down the big road. But if it comforts Anne the least bit to have me go, I'm perfectly willing to keep on trying. Anyway, I'll look in there a moment before starting out on my regular round."