For she was alone, though she had so many friends. Quite alone sometimes; for God had been cruel to her, and had made her a lark without song.
When the sun faded and the beautiful casements lost all glow and meaning, Bébée rose with a startled look—had she been dreaming?—was it night?—would the children be sorry, and go supperless to bed?
"Have you a rosebud left to sell to me?" a man's voice said not far off; it was low and sweet, as became the Sacrament Chapel.
Bébée looked up; she did not quite know what she saw: only dark eyes smiling into hers.
By the instinct of habit she sought in her basket and found three moss-roses. She held them out to him.
"I do not sell flowers here, but I will give them to you," she said, in her pretty grave childish fashion.
"I often want flowers," said the stranger, as he took the buds. "Where do you sell yours?—in the market?"
"In the Grande Place."
"Will you tell me your name, pretty one?"
"I am Bébée."
There were people coming into the church. The bells were booming abovehead for vespers. There was a shuffle of chairs and a stir of feet. Boys in white went to and fro, lighting the candles. Great clouds of shadow drifted up into the roof and hid the angels.
She nodded her little head to him.
"Good night; I cannot stay. I have a cake at home to-night, and the children are waiting."
"Ah! that is important, no doubt, indeed. Will you buy some more cakes for the children from me?"
He slid a gold piece in her hand. She looked at it in amaze. In the green lanes by Laeken no one ever saw gold. Then she gave it him back.
"I will not take money in church, nor anywhere, except what the flowers are worth. Good night."
He followed her, and held back the heavy oak door for her, and went out into the air with her.
It was dark already, but in the square there was still the cool bright primrose-colored evening light.
Bébée's wooden shoes went pattering down the sloping and uneven stones. Her little gray figure ran quickly through the deep shade cast from the towers and walls. Her dreams had drifted away. She was thinking of the children and the cake.
"You are in such a hurry because of the cake?" said her new customer, as he followed her.
Bébée looked back at him with a smile in her blue eyes.
"Yes, they will be waiting, you know, and there are cherries too."
"It is a grand day with you, then?"
"It is my fête day: I am sixteen."
She was proud of this. She told it to the very dogs in the street.
"Ah, you feel old, I dare say?"
"Oh, quite old! They cannot call me a child any more."
"Of course not, it would be ridiculous. Are those presents in your basket?"
"Yes, every one of them." She paused a moment to lift the dead vine-leaves, and show him the beautiful shining red shoes. "Look! old Gringoire gave me these. I shall wear them at mass next Sunday. I never had a pair of shoes in my life."
"But how will you wear shoes without stockings?"
It was a snake cast into her Eden.
She had never thought of it.
"Perhaps I can save money and buy some," she answered after a sad little pause. "But that I could not do till next year. They would cost several francs, I suppose."
"Unless a good fairy gives them to you?"
Bébée smiled; fairies were real things to her—relations indeed. She did not imagine that he spoke in jest.
"Sometimes I pray very much and things come," she said softly. "When the Gloire de Dijon was cut back too soon one summer, and never blossomed, and we all thought it was dead, I prayed all day long for it, and never thought of anything else; and by autumn it was all in new leaf, and now its flowers are finer than ever."
"But you watered it whilst you prayed, I suppose?"
The sarcasm escaped her.
She was wondering to herself whether it would be vain and wicked to pray for a pair of stockings: she thought she would go and ask Father Francis.
By this time they were in the Rue Royale, and half-way down it. The lamps were lighted. A regiment was marching up it with a band playing. The windows were open, and people were laughing and singing in some of them. The light caught the white and gilded fronts of the houses. The pleasure-seeking crowds loitered along in the warmth of the evening.
Bébée, suddenly roused from her thoughts by the loud challenge of the military music, looked round on the stranger, and motioned him back.
"Sir,—I do not know you,—why should you come with me? Do not do it, please. You make me talk, and that makes me late."
And she pushed her basket farther on her arm, and nodded to him and ran off—as fleetly as a hare through fern—among the press of the people.
"To-morrow, little one," he answered her with a careless smile, and let her go unpursued. Above, from the open casement of a café, some young men and some painted women leaned out, and threw sweetmeats at him, as in carnival time.
"A new model,—that pretty peasant?" they asked him.
He laughed in answer, and went up the steps to join them; he dropped the moss-roses as he went, and trod on them, and did not wait.
CHAPTER IV
Bébée ran home as fast as her feet would take her.
The children were all gathered about her gate in the dusky dewy evening; they met her with shouts of welcome and reproach intermingled; they had been watching for her since first the sun had grown low and red, and now the moon was risen.
But they forgave her when they saw the splendor of her presents, and she showered out among them Père Melchior's horn of comfits.
They dashed into the hut; they dragged the one little table out among the flowers; the cherries and cake were spread on it; and the miller's wife had given a big jug of milk, and Father Francis himself had sent some honeycomb.
The early roses were full of scent in the dew; the great gillyflowers breathed\out fragrance in the dusk; the goat came and nibbled the sweetbrier unrebuked; the children repeated the Flemish bread-grace, with clasped hands and reverent eyes, "Oh, dear little Jesus, come and sup with us, and bring your beautiful Mother, too; we will not forget you are God." Then, that said, they ate, and drank, and laughed, and picked cherries from each other's mouths like little blackbirds; the big white dog gnawed a crust at their feet; old Krebs who had a fiddle, and could play it, came out and trilled them rude and ready Flemish tunes, such as Teniers or Mieris might have jumped to before an alehouse at the Kermesse; Bébée and the children joined hands, and danced round together in the broad white moonlight, on the grass by the water-side; the idlers came and sat about, the women netting or spinning, and the men smoking a pipe before bedtime; the rough hearty Flemish bubbled like a brook in gossip, or rung like a horn over a jest; Bébée and the children, tired of their play, grew quiet, and chanted together the "Ave Maria Stella Virginis"; a nightingale among the willows sang to the sleeping swans.
All was happy, quiet, homely; lovely also in its simple way.
They went early to their beds, as people must do who rise at dawn.
Bébée leaned out a moment from her own little casement ere she too went to rest.
Through an open lattice there sounded the murmur of some little child's prayer; the wind sighed among the willows; the nightingales sang on in the dark—all was still.
Hard work awaited her on the morrow, and on all the other days of the year.
She