Chapter 2

A bee bumbled around, stopping every now or then to visit a flower, and Tip watched it thoughtfully. He liked bees. Might he be able to persuade Janey to keep a hive? When he’d changed back, of course. They could serve fresh, home-made honey at the café. And Tip would be able to get one of those outfits, with the net veil and the gauntlets…Yes. Definitely worth a try.

* * * *

The outside seating at Tiptree’s Treats was set in a sunken area of the gardens, bordered by the lawn, so Tip’s little patch of sunlight and grass was pretty much at table level. He’d become quite adept at scrounging bits of salad from people’s sandwiches—tortoises might not exactly have a head start in the cute stakes, at least not compared to furrier fauna, but Tip reckoned he was pretty good at working with what he’d got.