emed like king's jewels; and in place of those little green
arbors, great white palaces, cool and still, with ilex woods and orange
groves and sapphire seas beyond them. Would you like to come there,
Bebee?--and wear laces such as you weave, and hear singing and laughter
all night long, and never work any more in the mould of the garden, or
spin any more at that tiresome wheel, or go any more out in the wind, and
the rain, and the winter mud to the market?"

Bebee listened, leaning her round elbows on the table, and her warm
cheeks on her hands, as a child gravely listens to a fairy story. But
the sumptuous picture, and the sensuous phrase he had chosen, passed by
her.

It is of no use to tempt the little chaffinch of the woods with a ruby
instead of a cherry. The bird is made to feed on the brown berries, on
the morning dews, on the scarlet hips of roses, and the blossoms of the
wind-tossed pear boughs; the gem, though it be a monarch's, will only
strike hard and tasteless on its beak.

"I would like to see it all," said Bebee, musingly trying to follow out
her thoughts. "But as for the garden work and the spinning--that I do not
want to leave, because I have done it all my life; and I do not think I
should care to wear lace--it would tear very soon; one would be afraid to
run; and do you see I know how it is made--all that lace. I know how
blind the eyes get over it, and how the hearts ache; I know how the old
women starve, and the little children cry; I know that there is not a
sprig of it that is not stitched with pain; the great ladies do not
think, I dare say, because they have never worked at it or watched the
others: but I have. And so, you see, I think if I wore it I should feel
sad, and if a nail caught on it I should feel as if it were tearing the
flesh of my friends. Perhaps I say it badly; but that is what I feel."

"You do not say it badly--you speak well, for you speak from the heart,"
he answered her, and felt a tinge of shame that he had tempted her with
the gold and purple of a baser world than any that she knew.

"And yet you want to see new lands?" he pursued. "What is it you want to
see there?"

"Ah, quite other things than these," cried Bebee, still leaning her
cheeks on her hands. "That dancing and singing is very pretty and merry,
but it is just as good when old Claude fiddles and the children skip.
This wine, you tell me, is something very great; but fresh milk is much
nicer, I think. It