Bébée; Or, Two Little Wooden Shoes. Ouida

Go away, all of you; look, there comes the gendarme—it will be the worse for you. Sir, sit under my stall; they will not dare trouble you then."

      He moved under the awning, thanking her with a smile; and the people, laughing, shuffled unwillingly aside and let him paint on in peace. It was only little Bébée, but they had spoilt the child from her infancy, and were used to obey her.

      The painter took a long time. He set about it with the bold ease of one used to all the intricacies of form and color, and he had the skill of a master. But he spent more than half the time looking idly at the humors of the populace or watching how the treasures of Bébée's garden went away one by one in the hands of strangers.

      Meanwhile, ever and again, sitting on the edge of her stall, with his colors and brushes tossed out on the board, he talked to her, and, with the soft imperceptible skill of long practice in those arts, he drew out the details of her little simple life.

      There were not always people to buy, and whilst she rested and sheltered the flowers from the sun, she answered him willingly, and in one of her longer rests showed him the wonderful stockings.

      "Do you think it could be the fairies?" she asked him a little doubtfully.

      It was easy to make her believe any fantastical nonsense; but her fairies were ethereal divinities. She could scarcely believe that they had laid that box on her chair.

      "Impossible to doubt it!" he replied, unhesitatingly. "Given a belief in fairies at all, why should there be any limit to what they can do? It is the same with the saints, is it not?"

      "Yes," said Bébée, thoughtfully.

      The saints were mixed up in her imagination with the fairies in an intricacy that would have defied the best reasonings of Father Francis.

      "Well, then, you will wear the stockings, will you not? Only, believe me, your feet are far prettier without them."

      Bébée laughed happily, and took another peep in the cosy rose-satin nest.

      But her little face had a certain perplexity. Suddenly she turned on him.

      "Did not you put them there?"

      "I?—never!"

      "Are you quite sure?"

      "Quite; but why ask?"

      "Because," said Bébée, shutting the box resolutely and pushing it a little away,—"because I would not take it if you did. You are a stranger, and a present is a debt, so Antoine always said."

      "Why take a present then from the Varnhart children, or your old friend who gave you the clasps?"

      "Ah, that is very different. When people are very, very poor, equally poor, the one with the other, little presents that they save for and make with such a difficulty are just things that are a pleasure; sacrifices; like your sitting up with a sick person at night, and then she sits up with you another year when you want it. Do you not know?"

      "I know you talk very prettily. But why should you not take any one else's present, though he may not be poor?"

      "Because I could not return it."