CHAPTER VIII. WORSE AND WORSE WITH HARRY THORSBY. One very hot, still July morning, before these just recorded occurrences, and nearly a year before Millicent Heritage’s eventful journey to London, Betty Trapps, who had been gathering peas in the garden, ran into the house with her checked apron flung over her head, and going puff! puff! this way and that, as if to blow something away. When asked what was the matter, she said, “It’s a harnet, as keen as mustard. It fled at me, and fled at me, like a big dumbledore.” “Yes,” said George, “there is a nest of them in a hole in the barn-wall; we must suffocate them with brimstone-fumes at night. They are very destructive to fruit, and dangerous to the horses.” “Suffocate a devil with brimstone!” said Betty. “That’s a good un. This harnet is for all the world like th’ owd enemy. He comes at you, and at you, as if he’d eat you.” Whilst George was quietly smiling at Betty’s idea, there was a loud ringing of a poker and fire-shovel, and he saw Sam Davis, one of the labourers, crossing the garden beds, and looking up at the trees, as in search of something. “There!” said Betty, “now the bees are swarming: this hot morning fetches them all out.” George, Ann, Mrs. Woodburn, and Betty, as well as the other maids, all hurried out to witness the interesting process of charming the bees down. Loud rung Sam Davis’s music on the fire-shovel, and presently they saw a brown cluster of bees, as large as a man’s hat, and longer, hanging from the bough of an apple-tree.