Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 22, 2025
‘Not quite so hard to bear, bebee?’ ‘No, child; my head wanders when I think of them.
Bébée sat with a wondering look in her wide-opened eyes, and all the natural instincts of her youth, that were like curled-up fruit buds in her, unclosed softly to the light of joy. "Is life always like this in your Rubes' land?" she asked him; that vague far-away country of which she never asked him anything more definite, and which yet was so clear before her fancy.
God give me patience!’ ‘And what if he doesn’t, bebee; isn’t he poisoned like a hog? Gentleman, indeed! why call him gentleman? if he ever was one he’s broke, and is now a tinker, a worker of blue metal.’ ‘That’s his way, child, to-day a tinker, to-morrow something else; and as for being drabbed, I don’t know what to say about it.’
The old hawker got cross at her silence, and called her an unthankful jade, and wished that he had left her to her fate, and parted company with her at two cross-roads, saying his path did not lie with hers; and then when he had done that, was sorry, and being a tenderhearted soul, hobbled back, and would fain press a five-franc piece on her; and Bébée, refusing it all the while, kissed his old brown hands and blessed him, and broke away from him, and so went on again solitary towards St.
The starling was awake. Bébée rose in her bed, and looked around, as she had done when she had asked for the moss-rosebud. A sense of unutterable universal pain ached over all her body.
The winds had blown, and the rains had rained, and the sun had shone on her, indeed, and had warmed the whiteness of her limbs, but they had only given to her body and her soul a hardy, breeze-blown freshness like that of a field cowslip. She had never been called anything but Bébée.
"Oh, I remember you," said Bébée, lifting her frank eyes. "But you know I speak to so many people, and they are all nothing to me." "Who is anything to you?" It was softly and insidiously spoken, but it awoke no echo. "Varnhart's children," she answered him, instantly. "And old Annémie by the wharfside and Tambour and Antoine's grave and the starling and, of course, above all, the flowers."
Do you know what poetry is, Bébée?" "No." "But your flowers talk to you?" "Ah! always. But then no one else hears them ever but me; and so no one else ever believes."
"Yes, onward, quite far onward," said Bébée, wondering that he had forgotten all she had told him the day before about her hut, her garden, and her neighbors. "You did not come and finish your picture to-day: why was that? I had a rosebud for you, but it is dead now." "I went to Anvers. You looked for me a little, then?" "Oh, all day long. For I was so afraid I had been ungrateful."
Away on the left went the green fields of colza, and beetroot, and trefoil, with big forest trees here and there in their midst, and, against the blue low line of the far horizon, red mill-sails, and gray church spires; dreamy plaintive bells far away somewhere were ringing the sad Flemish carillon. He paused and looked at her. "I must bid you good night, Bébée; you are near your home now."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking