"Tell him about the drones," said Lloyd, meaningly. She resented being laughed at. "_They_ don't like the school of the bees eithah. If Aristotle and Cato and Pliny and those old philosophahs could spend time studying them, _you_ needn't tuh'n up yoah nose at them!"
Lloyd turned away indignantly, but she looked so pretty with her eyes flashing, and the colour coming up in her cheeks, that Phil was tempted to keep on teasing them about their fad, as he called it. His antagonism to it was all assumed at first, but he began to feel a real resentment as the days wore on. It interfered too often with his plans. Several times he had walked up to the ranch to find Mr. Ellestad there ahead of him with a new book on bee culture, or an interesting account of some new experiment, or some ride was spoiled because, when he called, the girls had gone to Shaw's ranch to spend the afternoon.
Joyce and Lloyd purposely pointed all their morals, and illustrated all their remarks whenever they could, by items learned at the School of the Bees, until Phil groaned aloud whenever the little honey-makers were mentioned.
"If you had been Shapur you nevah would have followed that bee to the Rose Garden of Omah, would you?" asked Lloyd, one day when they had been discussing the legend of Camelback.
"No," answered Phil, "nothing could tempt me to follow one of those irritating little creatures."
"Not even to reach the City of yoah Desiah?"
"My City of Desire would have been right in that oasis, probably, if I had been Shapur. The story said, 'Water there was for him to drink, and the fruit of the date-palm.' He had everything to make him comfortable, so what was the use of going around with an ambition like a burning simoom in his breast."
"I don't believe that you have a bit of ambition," said Lloyd, in a disapproving tone that nettled Phil. "Have you?"
"I can't say that it keeps me awake of nights," laughed Phil. "And I can't see that anybody is any happier or more comfortable for being all torn up over some impossible thing he is for ever reaching after, and never can get hold of."
"Neahly everybody I know is like Shapur," said Lloyd, musingly. "Joyce is wild to be an artist, and Betty to write books, and Holland to go into the navy, and Jack to be at the head of the mines. Papa has promised him a position in the mine office as soon as he learns Spanish, and he is pegging away at it every spare minute. He says Jack will make a splendid man, for it is his great ambition to be just like his fathah, who was so steady-going and reliable and honahable in all he undahtook, that he had the respect of everybody. Papa says Jack will make just the kind of man that is needed out heah to build up this new country, and he expects great things of him some day. He says that a boy who is so faithful in small things is bound to be faithful to great ones of public trust."