Burbidge took out of an oak locker his colour board for the year. "I know, marm, as yer be tasty with a needle," he said, "and I'll leave it to you to say what pleases you and the brown folk most." I suggested shades of blue, and told him of the Scotch belief that bees of all colours love blue best. But Burbidge would not admit this. "I never heard _that_ in Shropshire," he said stoutly. "Don't believe it, nor a letter of it. Orange or purple, I believe, be every bit as good as blue." Then I asked Burbidge about the old Shropshire bees that learned folks in bee-lore have told me were descended from the old wild bees that the British had, and of which there are still swarms in straw skeps in far-away farmhouses nestling against the Clee. But about these wild bees Burbidge knew nothing, but only felt certain that anything "as be Shropshire born be bound to be good." Then I chose the colours--red, flame, crimson, salmon, mauve, pink, the delicate shade of the autumn crocus, jonquil yellow, and one or two shades of blue--and particularly the dear old-fashioned bleu de Marie that one meets in an Italian sky, as beautiful in its way as the breast of "old Adam" (the peacock) against a yew hedge on a fine March morning in full sunlight. It was a lovely spring morning on that Thursday, the appointed day for the removal of the bees to summer quarters. [Sidenote: MOONLIGHTERS AT WORK] Bess and I had a cup of milk and a slice of bread and butter, the best of all morning breakfasts, and ran out to see the sport. Burbidge was there with his boys, looking all of them like marauders, or moonlighters, for their faces were clothed with masks and their hands were covered with thick gloves. Bess grasped tight hold of my hand. "Mamsie, how wicked they look, as if they meant to kill some one," she whispered. As to Mouse, she could not contain her displeasure. She gave a series of low growls, and, for all she knew them, did not like their coming too near us. Burbidge propped back the garden gate with a stout staff. Then they carried the little wooden houses out. What an angry sound of buzzing went on inside, as the men bore them along. "Steady, steady!" cried Burbidge, in a tone of command, "or the little brown people will burst themselves with rage, and then, boys, it will be run for it who can."