Bebee

all playtime any more tha

e's friends have barely bread enough for themselves, life

s eyes, and a poet's thoughts sometimes in

atered, and planted her little plot; she kept her cabin as clean as a fresh-blossomed primrose; she milked her goat and swept her floor; she sat, all the warm days, in the town, selling her flowers, and in

me when she sat under the awning fronting the Maison du Roi; but all the time the child throve on it, and was happy, and dreamed o

en years-Bébée, standing barefoot on the mud floor, was as

d about her shoulders. Her pretty round plump little breast was white as the lilies in the grass without, and in this blooming time of her little life, Bébée, in her way, was beautiful as a peach-bloom

had to be active amidst them, else drought and rain, and worm and snai

l burdens; but perhaps the strongest love is that which, whilst it adores, dr

it hoed and dug, and hurt her hands, and tired her limbs, and

upon her, she dressed herself quickly and fed her fowls, and, hap

n was radiant; the smell of the wet earth was swe

ée-bonjour, bonjour." These were all the words it knew. It said the same words a thousand times a week

dawn and thought, without knowing that she though

e thing often, but the

e sm

or in the next cottage,

to be sixteen!-a

s wife, came out from

you, Bébée; why, you a

hes, rushed out of their little home up the lane, bringing with them a cake stuck full of sugar and

cked the plums, and Jeanne washed the almonds, and Christine took the ribbon off her

Laeken, hobbled through the grass on her crutches a

, little one, except my ble

and knelt down in the wet grass, and bent

st woman of them all, called to the

r you; not tasted one myself; they will make you a feast with Varnhart's cake, though she should ha

lack cherries; Tambour, the old white dog, who had used to drag her

oal-burner's children, who were turning somersaults

lavor of Paradise still, especially when they are

y their apple-trees, or their tall beans, or their hedges of thorn between them; you may ride by and n

een a day laborer in these same fields all his years, and had never travelle

alk of her-Lisette, who died forty year or more ago, they say; for me I think it was yesterday. Mère Krebs-she is a hard woman-heard me talking of my girl. She burst out laughing, 'Lord's sake, fool, why, your

hung from the roof. There was a walnut-wood press, such as the peasants of France and the low countries keep th

hand, and there came from it an odor of d

t of clothes, and a girl's sabots, an

ng along the lane for them-do you not know? There is nothing changed; nothing changed; the gra

ne is

was old; my g

dim eyes; the divine faith of love and the mule-like stupidity of igno

all of them. That is the sprig of sweetbrier she wore in her belt the day before the wagon knocked her down and killed her. I have never touched the things. But look here, Bébée, you are a good child and true, and like her

ender-scented clothes, and sitting down in the dull shadow of

r clasps about her waist, and the tears w

all the world was in its May-day flower! The silver felt cold to her

strung of daisies and hung abou

-burner's little tribe, running to meet her, sc

d you that off her own altar? Let me see-let me

e, and the milk carts were half an hour later for town, and the hens cackled loud unfed, and the men even stopp

n the curiosity shops in the Montagne," said Trine Krebs, going up the steps of her mill ho

with the child,

d ever begun like

nly a little rough woollen frock, and sits in the market place or the lace-room, with other girls around, how should

ck on a summer morning, when the city was waiting for its eggs, its honey, its flowers, its cream, a

put up her cakes and cherries, cut her two basketfuls out of the garden, locked her h

front of the Broodhuis; the same awning, tawny as an autumn pear and weather-blown as an old sai

with your pretty blue eyes, Bébée," people had sa

uld sit so long as she sold flowers in Brussels,-here, unde

Paris, and where in the cool, wet, sweet-smelling halls, all the flowers of Brabant are sp

ir tawny awnings and their merry hardy blossoms under the shadow of the H?tel de Ville, in the midst of the buyings and sellings, the games

erry as when she danced their rounds with them; and though she dreamed so much out there in the air among the carnations and the roses, or in the long, low workroom in the town, high against the crocketed pi

re for the gra

eekers, and the crowds flocked hither and thither to the woods, to the theatres, to the galleries, t

mones; when in the merry midsummer the chars-a-bancs trundled away into the forest with laughing loads of students and maidens; when in the rough winters the carriages left furred and je

the neighbors were good to her, and now and then, on a saint's day, she too g

uaint colors of the shipping on the quay, or at the long dark aisles of trees that went away through the forest, where her steps had never wandered,-sometimes Bébée would get pondering on all t

old priest is one of a family of peasants, and can just teach you the alphabet, and that is all. For Father Francis could do no more than this; and all his spare time was taken up

er that are quaint, touching, illuminated legends

as bright within its girdle of woodlan

nny avenues. It has blue and pink, and yellow and green, on its awnings and on its house fronts. It has a merry open-air life on its pavements at little marble tables before little gay-colo

Brussels of the noble

and the craftsmen, to the master-masons of the Moyen-age, to the same spirit and soul that once filled the

er the yellow sluggish stream, and the green barrels of the Antw

alaces, where in cobwebbed galleries and silent

ront of the Maison du Roi frowns against the sun, and the spires and pinnacles of the burgo

ss whose sunny aisles some little child goes slowly all alone, laden with lili

entury corbel holds a pot of roses, or a Gothic arch yawns beneath a wool warehouse, or a waterspout with

ory mixed up with the Romaunt of the Rose; or rather like some gay French vaudeville, all fashion and jest, illustrated in old Missal manner with helm and hauberk, cope and cowl, praying knights and fi

e knew; and she loved it well, and would n

e Broodhuis was that it had been there in his father's time; and regarding St. Gudule, that his mot

rt had grown to love them; and perhaps no student of Spanish architecture, no antiquar

little wistful, untaught brain tried to project itself into those unknown times, and failed, and yet found pleasure in the effort.

e the flowers, and s

eu all the summers she had known; the little old woman, sour as a crab, who sold rosaries and pictures of saints, and little waxen Christs upon a tray; the big dogs who pulled the carts in, and lay panting all day under the rush-bottomed chairs on which the egg-wives and the fruit sellers sat, and

e staye

t she loved it, and she sat resolutely in front of the Broodhuis, selling her flowers, smiling, chatting, helping the old woman, counting her little gains, eating her bit of bread at noonday like any other mark

saw-something that was still nearer to her than even this kindly crowd

none

e cobbler were of opinion that one had only too much of them sculptured about e