Bebee

ut on her country road, a shadow F

asked a voice that made her stop with a

er friend of the silk stockings leaning on a gate midw

ered, as he joined her.

bé

ank, appealing eyes, like

d been rude and ungrateful, and I could not be sure I had done rig

lau

wn from most moral uncertainties. Do not think twice

N

and she had lain awake all the night, turning it about in her little

g so fast, as if those wooden shoes

s that a s

But he did not shoe her feet with swiftness that I know of; she only runs

not unders

women," she said, a

ry or Hermes. Both mean the same thing,-mere words to designate a

told him the day before about her hut, her garden, and her neighbors. "You did not come a

. You looked for

or I was so afraid I

ar, except when they are very ill-treated. Mercury, whom we

he idle, shallow, cynical tone pained her by its levity a

"The night is cool, and it is only seven o'

d never perceives it; it would break her heart if one showed her so, but the Ba?s would not take them as they are; they are of no use at all. So I prick them out myself on fresh paper, and the Ba?s thinks it is all her doi

last, with a graver sound in his voice. "And who is this

was drowned at sea sixty years ago, and she w

t he beat her, and had a

uch of him. He was as good as good could be, and loved her so, and between the voyages they were so happy. Surel

with a smile that ha

be very sure, my dear, he beat her. Of the two, one

nderstand,"

ut you

ll?-w

iled

aps, or next year-o

on the little feet, that went beside him in the grass, and the pretty fair bosom that showed ever

h an easy grace, he was clad in picture-like velvets, he had a beautiful poetic head, and eyes like deep brown waters, and a face like one of Jordaens' or Rembrandt's

of Rubes' country, are

country,

just like those great gentlemen in the gold frames, only you have not a hawk and a sword, and they always have. I used to wonder where they came from, for they are not like any of us one bit, and the charwoman-she is L

iation of Rubens that all the Netherlanders used, and he guesse

"Do you not want to see Rubes' world, little one? To see the gold and the grandeur, and the glitter of it all?-never to toil or get tired?-always

re. But I should not like to live in it. I love my hut, and the starling, and the chickens, and what would the garden do without m

hat is

e ever I was living. St. Gudule now-they say it was built hundreds of years before; and Rubes again-they say he was a painter king in Antwerpen before the oldest, oldest woman like Annémie ever began to count time. I am sure books tell you all those things, because I see the students coming and going with them; and when I saw once the millions of books in the Rue du Musée, I asked the keeper what use they were for, and he said, 'To make men wise, my dear.' But G

truest remark on literature I have ever heard,

en I look at those windows in the cathedral, or at those beautiful twisted little spires that are all over our H?tel de Ville, I want to know who the men were that made them,-what they did and thought,-how they looked and spoke,-how they learned to shape stone into leaves and grasses like that,-how they could imagine all those angel faces on the glass. When I go alone in the quite early morni

re shining, her cheeks were warm, her l

peak to you in that

e sometimes. But he used to shake his head and say that it was no use thinking; most likely St. Gudule and St. Michael had set the church down in the night all ready made, why not? God made the trees, and they were more wonderfu

smi

ll I give you some?-nay, lend them, I mean, since giving you ar

ed as they lifted

ad and breaks it a million times before one learns to spin as fine as cobwebs. I have read the stories of St. Anne, and of St.

and then those that are more serious. But what time will

aughed

ter one has so few one must lie in bed, because to buy a candle you know one cannot afford except, of course, a

Grande Place to-morrow, or meet you on your road

N

flowers ta

lse hears them ever but me; an

one else ever hears these things, and so, when the poets write them out, the rest of the world say, 'That is very fine, no doubt, but

youth, and her innocence, and her simplicity, and her strength, were all u

joyous as one of her own carnations; but she knew hersel

sort of pity; and thought within hims

s with the summer heats. She would forget them. They would linger a little in her head, and, perhaps, always wake at some sunset hour or some angelus chim

ime, and rear her children honestly and well; and sit in the market stall every day, and spin and sew, and dig and wash, and

ly as she would be-

hink only as her neighbors thought, of price of wood and cost of bread; laboring cheerily but hardly from daybreak to nightfall to fill hu

made their nests under the willows; a life like the life of millions, a little purer, a little brighter, a little more tender, perhaps, than those lives usually are, but otherwise as lik

s she would be-if

he leave

orant, dreamful mind of hers was so like a blush rosebud, which looks so close-shut, and so sweet-smelling, and so tempting fold within fold, that a child will pull it open, forgetful that

autiful wayfarer from that unknown paradise of Rubes'

dead. Look; to-morrow, if you will be there

ébée looked at him with troubled eyes, but with

l only help me to learn a little. Sometimes I think I am no

s pretty, and to tempt her in that way seemed the natural course of things, but now there was some

the far edge of the plains-that was all. In the distant c

ll keep healthy, and strong, and pure, as people call it. It would be a pity to play with both a day, and then throw them away as the boy threw the pear-blossom. She is a little clod of

gainst the dusky red sky, a young man with a pile o

ed to her in Flemish, and scow

ad; who is it?" s

not think; he keeps his mother and three little sisters, and works so very, very hard in the fo

hung. In a ditch full of long grass little kids bleated by their mothers. Away on the left went the green fields of colza, and beetroot, and trefoil, with big forest trees here and there

and look

night, Bébée; you are

too and loo

ll see you

onsciousness of appeal as when the night

knew how it would be with her; he knew what her life would be as surely as he knew the peach would come out of the peach-f

h of white pear-blossom, which in carelessness he had knocked down with a stone on the grass yon

ity and be plucked by a peasant, or to pul

and the flight of the hours, stood looking at him with anxious and pleading eyes, thinking only-was he angr

to-morrow?" she

safe on the wall, Jeannot the woodcutter

d young peasant would cut it round with his hatchet and carry it to his wicker cage, that th

ned fields against the dull red skies was as a feather that

ould settle down into as time should go on. But when in the figure of the woodman there was painted visibly on the dusky sky that end

s he would have left her and let her alone

roodhuis and bring you your first book. Do not dream too much, or

back through the green

py smile; then she picked up the fallen pear-bloss

ttle clean white cap for the morrow; and then sitting down under the open lattice to prick out all

e fields, and woke some old people in their beds as they lay with their windows open, and they turned and crosse

s nearer heaven than anything else,-a litt

ar-blossoms were all dead; and no care could

struck them down," she sai