Explore "Gone to Earth" by Mary Webb on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Morning by morning Hazel watched the fuchsia bushes, set with small red flowers, purple-cupped, with crimson stamens, sway in beautiful abandon. The great black bees pulled at them like a calf at its mother. Their weight dragged the slender drooping branches almost to the earth. So the rich pageantry of beauty, the honeyed silent lives went on, and would go on, it seemed for ever. And then one morning all was over; one of Undern's hard early frosts took then all--the waxen red-pointed buds, the waxen purple cups, the red-veined leaves. The bees were away, and Hazel, seeking them, found a few half alive in sheltered crevices, and many frozen stiff. She put those that were still alive in a little box near the parlour fire. Soon a low delighted humming began as they one by one recovered and set off to explore the ceiling. Into this contented buzzing came Reddin, who had just been again to Sally's, and was much put out by her refusal to go away before November.
'What the h--- is all this humming?' he asked.