14 TWO LITTLE WOODEN SHOES. houses! That was all, was it? Eh, well-I do not begrudge you. Only take care ; remember the nuts and mulberries last through summei and autumn, and there are heaps othem on every fair-stall and street-corner; butthepme— that Is eaten in a day, one spring-time and_its like does not grow in the hedges.. You will bave your mouth full of sugar an hour- and then, ehl-you will go famished all the ye"ri'do not understand," said Bebee looking up with her thoughts far away, and scarcely healing the words spoken to her. "Oh pretty little fool! you understand well enough," said Lisette, grinning, as she rubbed up a melon. " Does he give you fine things ï You might let me see ! ' " No one gives me anything. " Chuti you want me to believe that. Why, Jules is only a lad, and his father is a silk-mer- cer and only gives him a hundred francs a month, but Jules buys me all I want-somehow -or dô you think I would take the trouble to set my cap straight when he goes by? He gave me these ear-rings, look. I wish you would let me see what you get." But Bebee had gone away-unheedmg- dreaming of Juliet and of Jeanne dAic, oi whom he had told her tales. He made sketches of her sometimes, but sel- dom pleased himself. . It was not so easy as he had imagined that it would prove to portray this little flower-like face with the clear eyes and the child's open brow He who had painted Phryne ^ long and faithfully had got a taint on his brush-he could not paint this pure, bright, rosy dawn- he who had always painted the: glareot_mid- night gas on rouge or rags. \ et he felt that it he could transfer to canvas the Ugh that was on Bebee'sface he would get what Scheffer had missed. For a time it eluded him. \ ou shall paint a gold and glistering brocade, or a tan ot ^cock's feather!, to perfection, and vet per- haps, the dewy whiteness of the humble little field-daisy shall baffle and escape you. He felt, too, that he must catch her expres- sion flying as he would do the flash ot a swal- low's wiug across a blue sky; he knew hut Bebee, forced to studied attitudes m an atelier, would be no longer the ideal that hecanted . More than onee he came and filled in more j fully his various designs in the little hut garden, among the sweet gray lavender and the golden disks of the sunflowers; and more than once Bebee was missed from her place in the front of the Broodhuis. , The Varnhart children would gather now and then open-mouthed at the wicket, and Mere Krebs would shake her head as she went by on her sheepskin saddle, and mutter that the child's head would be turned by vanity; and old Jehan would lean on his stick and peer - through the sweet-brier, and wondered stupidly if this strange man who coula make Bebee s face beam over again upon that panel of wood could not give him back his dead daughter who had been fushed away under the black.earth so long long before, when the red mill had been bfàve and new, the red mill that the boys and girls called old. But except these, no one noticed much. Painters were no rare sights in Brabant. _ The people were used to see them coming and going, making pictures of mud and stones and lucks and sheep, and of all common and Sil^Whafdoes he pay you, Bebee?" they used to ask, with the shrewd Flemish thought after the main chance. "Nothing," Bebee would answer, with a «uick colof in her face; and they would reply Zcontemptuous reproof, " Careless little fool; -you should make en, „gh to buy you wood al winter. When the man from Ghent painted Trine and her cow, he gave her a whole gold hit for standing still so long in the clovei. •The Krebs would be sure to lendyou her cow if it be the cow that makes the difference. , Bebee was silent, weeding her carnation-bed-,, -what could she tell them that they would un- deShensee?med so far away from them aU-thoec aood friends of her childhood-now that this Wde?ful new world of his giving had opened io her sight. She lived in a dream. ?_«_„ Whether she sat in the market-place taking eopper coins, or in the moonlight with a book on her knees, it was all the same. Her feet «n. her tongue spoke, her hands worked ; she did Mi neglect her goat or her garden, she did not forsake her house labor or her good deeds to old Annemie- but all the while she only heard one Voice, she only felt one touch, she only saw one faH'ere and there-one in a million-there is a female thing that can love like this, once and fOTSueh an one is dedicated, birth upwards, to the Mater Dolorosa. „ . . He had something nearer akin to.affection for herthanhehadeverhadinhis life for any- thing but he was never in love with her-no n oil in love with her than with the moss-rose- buds that she fastened in his breast Yet he played with her, because she was such a little, soft tempting, female thing; and because to see her face flush, and her heart heave, to feel her fresh feelings stir into life, and to watch her changes from shyness to confidence and from frankness again into fear, was a natural pastime in the lazy golden weather. P Th™ he spared her as far as he did-when after all she would have married Jeannot any- how-and that he sketched her face m the open air and never entered her hut and never be- guiled her to his own old palace m the city, was a ew virtue in himself for which he hardly knew whether to feel respect or ridicule; any- way it seemed virtue to him. So long as he did not seduce the body it seemed to him that it could never matter how he slew the soul-the little, honest, happy, pure, frank soul that amidst its poverty and hardships was like a robin's song to the winter sun. "Hoot, toot, pretty innocent, so you are no better thkn the rest of us," hissed her enemy Lisette the fruit girl, against her as she wen by the stall one evening as the sun set. Prut so it was no such purity after all that made you never look at tho student lads and the soldiers eh?-You were so dainty of taste, you must needs pick and choose, and, Lords sake, after all your coyness, to drop at a beckoning finger as one ma/ say-pong!-in a minute, hke an apple over-ripe! Oh he, you sly one! Bebee flushed red, in a sort of instinct of offense ; not sure what her fault was, but vaguely stung by the brutal words. Bebee walked homeward by him, with her empty baskets: looked at him with grave won- d6" Whatd'id she mean? I do not understand. I must have done some wrong—or she thinks so. Do you know?------" . , Flamen laughed, and answered her evasively. "You have done her the wrong of a fair skin when hers is brown, and a little foot while ners is as big as a trooper's; there is no greater sin, Bebee, possible in woman to woman. " Hold your peace, you shrill .jade he added, in anger to the fruiterer, flinging at her a crown piece that the girl caught and bit.with her teeth with a chuckle. '* Do not heed her, Bébée She is a çoarse-tongued brute, and is jealous, no doubt." "Jealous?—of what? _ The word had no meaning to Bebee. " That I am not . student or a soldier, as her 10 As'her to'vers were ! Bebee felt her face burn agafn Was he her lover then? The childs Scent body and soul thrilled with a hot, sweet delight and fear commingled. Bebee was not quite satisfied until she had knelt down that night and asked the Master of all poor maidens tosee if there were any wick- edness in her heart, hidden there like a bee in a rose and if there were to take it out and make her worthier of this wonderful new happiness in her life. Bebee ran down through the wet grass m a tumult of joy. She had never seen him so eariyinthe3day-never so early as this when nobody was up and stirring except birds and beasts and peasant folk. , kM She did not know how pretty she looked herself like a rain-washed wild rose; her feet gleamiAg with dew, her cheeks _ warin with health aM ioy; her sunny clustering hair free ftom he wnite cap and tumbling a htûe about her throat, because she had been stooping over ^SfCsed the wicket latch, andXhought there might be better ways of spending the day than in the gray shadows of old Mechlm " Will you give me a draught of water i he asked her as he crossed the garden "I will give you breakfast, said Beb e, happy as a bird. She felt no shame for the smallness of her home; no confusion at the Poverty of her little place; such embarrass- ments are born of self-consciousness, and Be- bee had no more self-consciousness than her own sweet, gray lavender-bush blowing against tbTheTavender-bush has no splendor like the roses has no colors like the hollyhocks; it is a Se plain, gray thing that the bees love and LTthePcott'a|ersy cherish, and that keeps the moth from the homespun linen, and that goes with the dead to their graves. It has many virtues and infinite sweetness but it does not know it or think of it; and it the village girls ever tell it so, it fancies they onïy praise it out of kindness as they put its slender fragrant spears away in their warm i bosoms. Bebee was like her lavender, and now that this beautiful Purple Emperor but- terfly came from the golden sunbeams to find Pleasure for a second in her freshness she was ' only very grateful, as the lavender-bush was to ^"fwifSve you your breakfast," said Be- bee, flushing rosily with pleasure, and putting awav tlie ivy coils that he might enter. "? have very little, you know," she added wistfully. "Only goat's milk and bread; but S that will do-aid there is some honey-,nd if you would eat a salad, I would cut one "lie did enter, and glanced round him with a curious pity and wonder both in one. It was'such a little, small, square place; and its floor was of beaten clay; and its unceiled roof he could have touched; and its absolute poverty was so plain,-and yet the child looked so happy in it, and was so like a flower and was^o dainty and fresh, and even so full of CHAPTER XIV. The next day, waking with a radiant little soul as a bird in the forest wakes m summer Bebee was all alone in the ane by theswans water. Inthe grey of ^hejaw^all the^good fXexc^t her&Y andTamë.old JehaiThad tramped off to a pilgrimage, leeway, winch the bishop of the city had enjoined on all the faithful as a sacred duty. tfc1T,vi„ffhr,w Bebee doing her work, singing, thinking how good God was, and dreaming over a thousand fancies of the wonderful stories he had to d hei and of the exquisite delight that wouidlie for her in watchingfor him all through the shining hours, Bebee felt her little heart leap like a squirrel as the voice that was the music ot heaven to her called through the stillness,— "Good day, pretty one! you are as early as the terk, Bebee. I go to Mayence, so I thought I would lçok at you one moment as 1 pass. S She stood and looked at him with frank and grateful eyes; she could hardly believe that he was here; he! the stranger of Rubes' land, m her own little rush-covered home. _ But she was not embarrassed by it ; she was glad and proud. , There is a dignity of peasants as well as ot kings" the dignWjhat fomes from all absence of effort, all freedom from pretense.¦»*£ had this, and she had more still than this .she had the absolute simplicity of childhood with heSome1 women have it still when they are four- SCShe could have looked at him forever she was so happy; she cared nothing now for those dazzling dahlias-he had left them; he was act- ually hire-here in her own, little dear home with the cocks looking in at the threshold and the sweet-peas nodding at the lattice, and the starling crying "Bonjour! Bonjour! „ ' ' You are tired, I am sure you must be tired, she said pulling her little bed forward for him to sit on, C there were only two wooden stools in the hut, and no chair at all. Then she took his sketching easel and brushes from his hand, and would have kneeled and taken the dust off his boots; ifhe wouldhave let her; and went hither and thither gladly and lightly, bringing him a wooden bowl of milK and thé rest of the slender fare, and cutting « quick as thought iresh cresses and lettuce from her garden, ami bringing him, as the. crown of all Father Francis's honey-comb on vine-leaves, wi h some pretty sprays of box and .nngnonette scattered about It-doing all this with a swift sweet grace that robbed the labor of all 00k of slrvltule, and looking at him ^er and again with a smile that said as clearly as any.words. " I cannot do much, but what I do, I do with I d Theresas something in the sight of her go- I ing and coming in those simple household