second on the edge of the bowl to peck at the food from the big
wooden spoon; they had known her all the sixteen summers of her life, and
were her playfellows, only they would never tell her anything of what
they saw in winter over the seas. That was her only quarrel with them.
Swallows do not tell their secrets They have the weird of Procne on
them all.

The sun came and touched the lichens of the roof into gold.

Bebee smiled at it gayly as it rose above the tops of the trees, and
shone on all the little villages scattered over the plains.

"Ah, dear Sun!" she cried to it. "I am going to be wise. I am going into
great Rubes' country. I am going to hear of the Past and the Future. I am
going to listen to what the Poets say. The swallows never would tell me
anything; but now I shall know as much as they know. Are you not glad for
me, O Sun?"

The Sun came over the trees, and heard and said nothing. If he had
answered at all he must have said,--

"The only time when a human soul is either wise or happy is in that one
single moment when the hour of my own shining or of the moon's beaming
seems to that single soul to be past and present and future, to be at
once the creation and the end of all things. Faust knew that; so will
you."

But the Sun shone on and held his peace. He sees all things ripen and
fall. He can wait. He knows the end. It is always the same.

He brings the fruit out of the peach-flower, and rounds it and touches it
into ruddiest rose and softest gold: but the sun knows well that the
peach must drop--whether into the basket to be eaten by kings, or on to
the turf to be eaten by ants. What matter which very much after all?

The Sun is not a cynic; he is only wise because he is Life and he is
Death, the creator and the corrupter of all things.

CHAPTER IX.

But Bebee, who only saw in the sun the sign of daily work, the brightness
of the face of the world, the friend of the flowers, the harvest-man of
the poor, the playmate of the birds and butterflies, the kindly light
that the waking birds and the ringing carillon welcomed,--Bebee, who was
not at all afraid of him, smiled at his rays and saw in them only fairest
promise of a cloudless midsummer day as she gave her last crumb to the
swallows, dropped down off the thatch, and busied herself in making bread
that Mere Krebs would bake for her, until it was time to cut her flowers
and go down into the town.

When her loaves were made and sh