ants. And I will stable my cows in
the hut to sweeten it after a dead man, and I will take my chance of
making money out of it, and no one can speak more fair than that when one
sees what weather is, and thinks what insects do; and all the year round,
winter and summer, Bebee here will want for nothing, and have to take no
care for herself whatever."

She who spoke, Mere Krebs, was the best-to-do woman in the little lane,
having two cows of her own and ear-rings of solid silver, and a green
cart, and a big dog that took the milk into Brussels. She was heard,
therefore, with respect, and a short silence followed her words.

But it was very short; and a hubbub of voices crossed each other after it
as the speakers grew hotter against one another and more eager to
convince each other of the disinterestedness and delicacy of their offers
of aid.

Through it all Bebee sat quite quiet on the edge of the little
truckle-bed, with her eyes fixed on the apple bough and the singing
chaffinch.

She heard them all patiently.

They were all her good friends, friends old and true. This one had given
her cherries for many a summer. That other had bought her a little waxen
Jesus at the Kermesse. The old woman in the blue linen skirt had taken
her to her first communion. She who wanted her sister to have the crust
and the flowers, had brought her a beautiful painted book of hours that
had cost a whole franc. Another had given her the solitary wonder,
travel, and foreign feast of her whole life,--a day fifteen miles away at
the fair at Mechlin. The last speaker of all had danced her on her knee a
hundred times in babyhood, and told her legends, and let her ride in the
green cart behind big curly-coated Tambour.

Bebee did not doubt that these trusty old friends meant well by her, and
yet a certain heavy sense fell on her that in all these counsels there
was not the same whole-hearted and frank goodness that had prompted the
gifts to her of the waxen Jesus, and the Kermesse of Mechlin.

Bebee did not reason, because she was too little a thing and too
trustful; but she felt, in a vague, sorrowful fashion, that they were all
of them trying to make some benefit out of her poor little heritage, with
small regard for herself at the root of their speculations.

Bebee was a child, wholly a child; body and soul were both as fresh in
her as a golden crocus just born out of the snows. But she was not a
little fool, though people sometimes ca