Gray-beard could not see us to bed that night, so the superintendent took his place. "Good-night, boys, keep quiet and go to sleep," he said as he went downstairs after he had heard us say our prayer. "Warren, you've earned ten cents to-day," said Brush; "I think Lester earned something too. I don't know how much it's going to be, but I'll go and see the superintendent about it to-morrow." "Say, Brush, I think that bee that stung Lester was a drone; that's why his face is all swelled up," I said. "Oh! go 'long!" he answered. "Whoever heard of a drone having a sting. They have no sting, and they can't sting. It's only the working bees that have a sting." "But those drones are big fellows, two times as big as the working bees. The superintendent showed me one when he was moving a swarm to a new box in the bee house." "They haven't any sting, though. There are three kinds of bees: there's the queen, then there's the drone, and there's the working bees. When the drones get too many, and eat too much, the working bees, they get mad and they sting them to death." "I think that work bee thought Lester was drone," remarked Edwin. "Wait till I get well," threatened Lester; "I'll show you drone!" "What is the queen?" asked Warren. "And what does it do?" "Why a queen is a female king," explained Brush, who was authority on a great many things. "She doesn't do anything but sit on a big throne and tell people what to do. If they don't mind her, she makes her soldiers cut their heads off. It's the same with bees: they have a queen,--I don't think she sits on a throne, but she tells the rest of the bees what to do; and if they don't mind her, she gets up and goes; then all the rest have to follow her, because they won't know what to do unless she tells them. That's what that old queen did to-day." "Why don't the 'Mericans have a king?" asked Edwin. "They got a President, but I don't think he's big like a king." "They had one," said Brush; "but they didn't like him, because he put a terrible big tax on tea. The 'Mericans are awfully fond of tea, and when they saw they'd have to pay the trader and the king, too, for their tea, they got mad; and one night, when everybody was asleep, they painted up like wild Indians, and they got into a boat and paddled out to the tea ship and climbed in. They hollered and yelled like everything, and scared everybody; then they spilted the tea into the ocean." "What did the old king do?" asked Lester. "Well, he was hopping mad, and he lifted his great big sceptre, and he went up to the man that brought the news, and knocked him over. Then he walked up and down talking loud, and when he got tired he went to his throne and sat down hard." "What is a sceptre?" I asked, interrupting the story. "Why, it's something like a war club; when the king tells people to do things, he shakes it at them, so they will get scared and mind What he says."