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The bird is made to feed on the brown berries, on the morning dews, on the scarlet hips of roses, and the blossoms of the wind-tossed pear boughs; the gem, though it be a monarch's, will only strike hard and tasteless on its beak. "I would like to see it all," said Bébée, musingly trying to follow out her thoughts.
Every other springtime Bébée had run with fleet feet under the budding trees down into the city, and had sold sweet little wet bunches of violets and brier before all the snow was melted from the eaves of the Broodhuis. "The winter is gone," the townspeople used to say; "look, there is Bébée with the flowers."
So Bébée, all holiday though it was, and heroine though she felt herself, ran indoors, put up her cakes and cherries, cut her two basketfuls out of the garden, locked her hut, and went on her quick and happy little feet along the grassy paths toward the city.
Ah! that does not please you? you care for none of these vanities. No. Poor little Bébée, why did God make you, or Chance breathe life into you? You are so far away from us all. It was cruel. What harm has your poor little soul ever done that, pure as a flower, it should have been sent to the hell of this world?" She clung to him, sobbing without sound. "You will come back?
Jonas Bebee, it may readily be inferred that he is very likely to commit an occasional mistake, and blunder, though unconsciously, into the commission of acts most terribly annoying to others. His evening calls upon ladies generally produce a marked effect upon those specially selected for the favor. The character of the effect will appear in the following little scene, which we briefly sketch
Bébée went away thoughtfully out of the old crazy water-washed house by the quay; life seemed growing very strange and intricate and knotted about her, like the threads of lace that a bad fairy has entangled in the night. Her stranger from Rubes' land was a great man in a certain world. He had become great when young, which is perhaps a misfortune. It indisposes men to be great at their maturity.
"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.
By the time her baskets were full, her fowls fed, her goat foddered, her starling's cage cleaned, her hut door locked, and her wooden shoes clattering on the sunny road into the city, Bébée was almost content again, though ever and again, as she trod the familiar ways, the tears dimmed her eyes as she remembered that old Antoine would never again hobble over the stones beside her.
A hand tapped at the lattice. The shrill voice of Reine, the sabot-maker's wife, broken with anguish, called through the hanging ivy, "Bébée, you are a wicked one, they say, but the only one there is at home in the village this day.
The Gretchen of Scheffer tells no tale; she is a fair-haired, hard-working, simple-minded peasant, with whom neither angels nor devils have anything to do, and whose eyes never can open to either hell or heaven. But the Gretchen of Flamen said much more than this: looking at it, men would sigh from shame, and women weep from sorrow. "Count the daisies?" echoed Bébée. "Oh, I know what you mean.
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