"Not so bad?" asked Hummel, angrily. "Shall I have to see the bees buzzing around your nose? Shall I have to suffer my wife to go about the whole summer with her nose swollen up as large as an apple? Prepare a room for the surgeon immediately: he will never be out of our house during the next month." Laura approached her father. "I can see you wish to begin a quarrel anew with our neighbors: if you love me, do not do so. I cannot tell you, father, how much this quarreling annoys me. Indeed I have suffered too much from it." "I believe you," replied Hummel, cheerfully. "But it is because I love you that I must in good time put an end to this annoyance from over there, before these winged nuisances carry away honey from our garden. I don't intend to have you attacked by the bees of any of our neighbors, do you understand me?" Laura turned and looked gloomily in the water, on which the fallen catkins of the birch were swimming slowly towards the town. "Do something, keeper, to preserve peace between neighbors," continued Hummel. "Take my compliments to Mr. Hahn, with the request from me that he will remove his bees, so that I may not be obliged to call in the police again." "I will tell him, Mr. Hummel, that the bees are disagreeable to the neighborhood; for it is true the gardens are small." "They are so narrow that one could sell them in a bandbox at a Christmas fair," assented Hummel. "Do it out of pity to the bees themselves. Our three daffodils will not last them long as food, and afterwards there will be nothing for them but to gnaw the iron railings." He gave the park-keeper a few coppers, and added, to his wife and daughter: "You see how forbearing I am to our neighbor, for the sake of peace." The ladies returned to the house, depressed and full of sad forebodings. As the park-keeper did not appear again, Mr. Hummel watched for him on the following day. "Well, how is it?" he asked. "Mr. Hahn thinks that the hives are far enough from the street; they are behind a bush and they annoy no one. He will not give up his rights." "There it is!" broke out Hummel. "You are my witness that I have done all in the power of man to avoid a quarrel. The fellow has forgotten that there is a Section 167. I am sorry, keeper; but the police must be the last resort."