“When one is not much over two years old, one can’t think of everything, and the Bee Baby didn’t notice that which the older people had been watching for a month—Xyntli was awake! “After a sleep of two hundred years—and more—one night she had stirred and turned herself, shaking her mountain and the village on its slope. The next morning a thin, gray streamer floated from the top of the cone; and the old people said: ‘Xyntli’s veil! Oh, when she sees—’ And they shook their heads. “Since that day the veil had floated, sometimes like a broad banner, then again Xyntli drew it in until it was gathered down inside. But yet, she had not looked out and seen how the forests and streams were defacing her mountain. “And the Bee Baby didn’t look up at the great blue triangle. The kitchen was at the right of the house; and he had a feeling that said: ‘Breakfast.’ So those good little feet carried him over to the big stone where the women ground corn to make the flat cakes that he liked to nibble with his brand-new teeth. The stone oven where they were baked was there too; and the Bee Baby found some cakes lying on the grinding-stone. He had to stand on his tiptoes and feel over the stone, to find them; but he knew where to feel, and where to find a banana, too. So why should he wake the cook? “With the flat cakes in one hand and the bitten banana in the other, he set out, following the level sunbeams into the green grove. He knew just where he wanted to go, and trotted straight on until he came to an old tree. “If it had been a _tree_ that he was looking for, it wasn’t much to see. It hadn’t a green leaf on it, and only a few scraggly branches. But he was not a bird, nor a squirrel; he was a Bee Baby. And considered as a beehive, it left nothing to wish for. There was the fine hollow trunk to store the honey; and a round knot-hole near the ground, for the bees to pass in and out, all day long, in sunshiny weather. And that funny brown baby never seemed tired of watching them—hurrying off, and coming back dusty with pollen, and with masses of it in the pockets on their legs, or laden with clear, sweet honey. Sometimes a bee lit on his finger. Then the wise baby sat quite still, and never brushed it off; so he didn’t find out that it carried a needle in its tail—as sharp as its temper. (But he was careless about letting the dimple come in his cheek. It’s a wonder the bees didn’t fly in, it was so deep and red and sweet.) “When the baby came to the tree this morning, even he could see that something was different. The bees were not going about the business of the day—gathering honey—in their usual orderly fashion. No, indeed! They were running in and out of the knot-hole, helter-skelter; and such a humming as there was inside the tree!