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mad invasion of the delivery room; his wild assertion, as they carried him off, that the port-wine stain near my eye was a devil’s mark—all this commotion, naturally, ended the quest. Not, however, the general project. Out of scrap pine Grandfather fashioned a box-hive of his own, whitewashed and established it among the lilacs next to the goat-pen, and bade Uncle Konrad keep his eyes open for a migrant swarm, the season being opportune.
    His expectation was not unreasonable, even though East Dorset was by 1930 a proper residential ward with sidewalks, sewers, and streetlights. To maintain a goat might be judged eccentric, even vulgar, by neighbors with flush toilets and daily milk service; chickens, likewise, were
non grata
on Seawall Street (if not on Hayward or Franklin, where roosters crowedto the end of the Second World War); but there was nothing unseemly about a stand of sweetcorn, for example, if one had ground enough, or a patch of cucumbers, or a hive of bees. These last, in fact, were already a feature of our street’s most handsome yard: I mean Erdmann’s, adjacent but for an alley to our own. Upon Willy Erdmann’s three fine skeps, braided of straw and caned English-fashion, Grandfather had brooded all winter. Two were inhabited and prosperous; the third, brand new, stood vacant against the day when a swarm would take wing from the others in search of new quarters.
    Lilac honey, Grandfather declared, was more pleasing than any other to his taste; moreover it was essential that the hive be placed as far as possible from the house, not to disturb the occupants of either. Though no one pressed him to explain, he insisted it was for these reasons only (one or both of which must have been Erdmann’s also) that he located his hive in the extreme rear corner of our property, next to the alley.
    Our neighbor plainly was unhappy with this arrangement. Not long from the Asylum himself, whither he’d repaired to cure a sudden dipsomania, Erdmann was convalescing some months at home before he reassumed direction of his business. Pottering about his yard he’d seen our box-hives built and situated; as April passed he came to spend more time on the alley-side of his lot—cultivating his tulips, unmulching his roses, chewing his cigar, glaring from his beehives to ours.
    “Yes, well,” Grandfather observed. “Willy’s bees have been for years using our lilacs. Have I begrutched?”
    He made it his tactic at first to stroll hiveward himself whenever Erdmann was standing watch: he would examine his grape-canes, only just opening their mauve-and-yellow buds; he would make pleasantries in two tongues to Gretchen the goat; Erdmann soon would huff indoors.
    But with both Hector and Karl away, Grandfather was obliged to spend more time than usual at the stoneyard, however slack the business; throughout whole weekday mornings and afternoons his apiary interests lay under Erdmann’s scrutiny.
    “
A swarm in May is worth a load of hay,
” Uncle Konrad recalled:
    “
A swarm in June is worth a silver spoon.
    But a swarm in July is not worth a fly.
”
    May was cool, the lilacs and japonica had never blossomed so; then June broke out on the peninsula like a fire, everything flowered together, in Erdmann’s skeps the honey-flow was on.
    “What you need,” Grandfather said to Andrea, “you need peace and quiet and fresh air this summer. Leave Rosa the housework; you rest and feed your baby.”
    “What the hell have I
been
doing?” Mother asked. But she did not protest her father-in-law’s directive or his subsequent purchase of a hammock for her comfort, an extraordinary munificence. Even when his motive was revealed to be less than purely chivalrous—he strung the hammock between a Judas tree and a vine post, in view of the alley—she did not demur. On the contrary, though she teased Grandfather without mercy, she was diverted by the stratagem and cooperated beyond his expectation. Not only did she make it her