A little time after the Grub was full grown, and stepped out of her cell as big and as beautiful as the Bees could wish. And besides, she knew how to commando "Away with you!" she said. "We must have more honey for our use in the winter, and you others must perspire more wax. I am thinking of building a new wing to the hive. The new Princesses shall live there next year; it is very unsuitable for them to be so near common Grubs." "Heyday!" said the Bees to one another. "One would think she had been a Queen ever since she lay in the egg." "No," said the head Bee Nurse; "that is not so. But she has had _queenly thoughts_, and that is the great thing." A SWARM OF WILD BEES By Albert W. Tolman "How many bridges have I driven rivets on?" repeated the watchman, reflectively. "Let me see--just forty-seven--no, forty-eight! I forgot the Mogung cantilever. Never in Burma were you? Well, it's the only time I ever went abroad. It was something of a compliment for a young fellow of twenty-two to be sent on his company's first job abroad. I should have liked the trip first rate if Harry Lancy hadn't been going as foreman. "Harry had risen from the ranks, and at twenty-five was considered one of the company's best men. I'd never worked under him; but I judged he'd be uppish and arbitrary, and knew I shouldn't like him. You notice such things when you've just come of age. As you get older, you begin to think less of your own feelings, and more of doing your work right. "We landed at Rangoon about May 1st, went by rail to Mandalay, and from there travelled slowly up-country by construction-train to the Mogung Gorge. During the whole journey I didn't speak a hundred words to Lancy. Still, I don't think he suspected I had any grudge against him. If he did, he never let on, but treated me just like the others. "The gorge was an awful hole, two hundred and fifty feet wide and two hundred deep, with the river dashing white over the ledges at its bottom. It was to be spanned by a cantilever bridge with an intermediate truss. "We found our work all cut out for us. Every beam and girder was on the ground, numbered and ready. There were plenty of coolies for the ordinary labor. So we got busy at once. A temporary wire suspension-bridge was thrown across above the site of the cantilever, and work begun from both sides at the same time. "From the outset I had determined to give Lancy no chance for fault-finding, but to have as little to do with him as I possibly could. "Little by little our beam-trusses pushed out from each bank, and the gap between them grew narrower. "One thing that interested me especially at first was the wild bees. For miles back into the hills their nests lined the walls of the gorge. Millions of them made it their thoroughfare to and from the flower-covered plains below us. Particularly at morning and night their hum, echoing through the ravine and mingling with the murmur of the river, sounded like the drone of distant machinery.