I was very fond of the canal which ran near us (and was, for that matter, a parish boundary): and the barges, with their cargoes, were always interesting to me; but a bargeful of bees seemed something quite out of the common. I thought I should rather like to float down a gentle river between flowery banks, surrounded by beehives on which I could rely to furnish me with a secure though moderate income; and I said so. "So should I, sir," said the bee-master. "And I should uncommon like to ha' seen the one beehive that brought in a considerable income. Honey must have been very dear in those parts, Master Jack. However, it's in the book, so I suppose it's right enough." I made no defence of the veracity of the _Cyclopaedia_, for I was thinking of something else, of which, after a few moments, I spoke. "Isaac, you don't stay with your bees on the moors. Do you ever go to see them?" "To be sure I do, Master Jack, nigh every Sunday through the season. I start after I get back from morning church, and I come home in the dark, or by moonlight. My missus goes to church in the afternoons, and for that bit she locks up the house." "Oh, I wish you'd take me the next time!" said I. "To be sure I will, and too glad sir, if you're allowed to go." That _was_ the difficulty, and I knew it. No one who has not lived in a household of old-fashioned middle-class country folk of our type has any notion how difficult it is for anybody to do anything unusual therein. In such a well-fitted but unelastic establishment the dinner-hour, the carriage horses, hot water, bedtime, candles, the post, the wash-day, and an extra blanket, from being the ministers of one's comfort, become the stern arbiters of one's fate. Spring cleaning--which is something like what it would be to build, paint, and furnish a house, and to "do it at home"--takes place as naturally as the season it celebrates; but if you want the front door kept open after the usual hour for drawing the bolts and hanging the robbers' bell, it's odds if the master of the house has not an apoplectic fit, and if servants of twelve and fourteen years' standing do not give warning. And what is difficult on week-days is on Sundays next door to impossible, for obvious reasons. But one's parents, though they have their little ways like other people, are, as a rule--oh, my heart! made sadder and wiser by the world's rough experiences, bear witness!--very indulgent; and after a good many ups and downs, and some compromising and coaxing, I got my way.