ls at
the wine shops. "That does just as well. And I have seen Kermesse once at
Malines--it was beautiful. I went with Mere Dax, but it cost a great deal
I know, though she did not let me pay."

"You little fool!" the fruit girl would say, and grin, and eat a pear.

But the good honest old women who sat about in the Grande Place, hearing,
had always taken the fruit girl to task, when they got her by herself.

"Leave the child alone, you mischievous one," said they. "Be content with
being base yourself. Look you, Lisette; she is not one like you to make
eyes at the law students, and pester the painter lads for a day's outing.
Let her be, or we will tell your mother how you leave the fruit for the
gutter children to pick and thieve, while you are stealing up the stairs
into that young French fellow's chamber. Oh, oh! a fine beating you will
get when she knows!"

Lisette's mother was a fierce and strong old Brabantoise who exacted
heavy reckoning with her daughter for every single plum and peach
that she sent out of her dark sweet-smelling fruit shop to be sunned in
the streets, and under the students' love-glances.

So the girl took heed, and left Bebee alone.

"What should I want her to come with us for?" she reasoned with herself.
"She is twice as pretty as I am; Jules might take to her instead--who
knows?"

So that she was at once savage and yet triumphant when she saw, as she
thought, Bebee drifting down the high flood of temptation.

"Oh, oh, you dainty one!" she cried one day to her. "So you would not
take the nuts and mulberries that do for us common folk, because you
had a mind for a fine pine out of the hothouses! That was all, was it?
Eh, well; I do not begrudge you. Only take care; remember, the nuts and
mulberries last through summer and autumn, and there are heaps of them on
every fair-stall and street corner; but the pine, that is eaten in a day,
one springtime, and its like does not grow in the hedges. You will have
your mouth full of sugar an hour,--and then, eh!--you will go famished
all the year."

"I do not understand," said Bebee, looking up, with her thoughts far
away, and scarcely hearing 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? You
might let me see."

"No one gives me anything."

"Chut! you want me to believe that. Why Jules is only a lad, and his
father is a silk me