The story of my life ; or, The sunshine and shadow of seventy years / by Mary A. Livermore ... with hitherto unrecorded incidents and recollections of three years' experience as an army nurse in the great Civil War, and reminiscences of twenty-five years' experiences on the lecture platform ... to which is added six of her most popular lectures ... with portraits and one hundred and twenty engravings from designs by eminent artists ...

AN EXPEDITION FOR SUMMER SWEETS.

325

morning. As usual, the children kept up a rattling fire of
mild disputation, and Dick, according to custom, was the
target for all their sharp shooting. But he kept his temper
admirably, even under Mary's merciless fire, and gave her
shot for shot.
" I'm gwine with Pete an' Allen, Pa, this evenin'," said
Dick, carelessly, as we were leaving the breakfast-room, "an'
I reckon we shan't be home till late."
"Going where, my son?"
"To see 'em cut down a bee tree that they've found in
the woods, back o' Liberty HIill. They 'spect to git buckets
an' buckets of honey, for there's a mighty big hive of wild
bees there; they've been watchin' out for "em. for a long
time."
A simultaneous protest from his elders, myself included,
was immediately entered against Dick's joining in this
adventure.
"You'll get more than you bargain for on an expedition of this sort," said his father "Bees have sense and
grit, and don't allow themselves to be dispossessed of their
store of summer sweets, without making a fight for their
property. If you should go with the boys you would run
the risk of being kept in bed for a week, under Aunt Aggy's
nursing, so disfigured with bee stings that your own mother
would not recognize you."
"In bed for a week!" echoed Mary "How can you
say that to Dick, Pa! Don't you know that the prospect of
a week in bed will make that lazy boy crazy to go a beehunting to-night??"
The boy shot a reproachful glance at his sister, but she
rattled on.
"Don't you know, Pa, that he'd get rid of Latin grammar for a week, if he were in bed all that time? I believe