ill,
because they spoil me, and they say I am too swift to say my mind. But I
am not thankless--not thankless, indeed--it is only I could not take what
I cannot pay. That is all. You are angry still--not now--no?"
There was, anxiety in the pleading. What did it matter to her what a
stranger thought?
And yet Bebee's heart was heavy as he laughed a little coldly, and bade
her good day, and left her alone to go out of the city homewards. A sense
of having done wrong weighed on her; of having been rude and ungrateful.
She had no heart for the children that evening. Mere Krebs was sitting
out before her door shelling peas, and called to her to come in and have
a drop of coffee. Krebs had come in from Vilvoeorde fair, and brought a
stock of rare good berries with him. But Bebee thanked her, and went on
to her own garden to work.
She had always liked to sit out on the quaint wooden steps of the mill
and under the red shadow of the sails, watching the swallows flutter to
and fro in the sunset, and hearing the droll frogs croak in the rushes,
while the old people told her tales of the time of how in their babyhood
they had run out, fearful yet fascinated, to see the beautiful Scots
Grays flash by in the murky night, and the endless line of guns and
caissons crawl black as a snake through the summer dust and the
trampled corn, going out past the woods to Waterloo.
But to-night she had no fancy for it: she wanted to be alone with the
flowers.
Though, to be sure, they had been very heartless when Antoine's coffin
had gone past them, still they had sympathy; the daisies smiled at her
with their golden eyes, and the roses dropped tears on her hand, just as
her mood might be; the flowers were closer friends, after all, than any
human souls; and besides, she could say so much to them!
Flowers belong to fairyland; the flowers and the birds and the
butterflies are all that the world has kept of its Golden Age; the only
perfectly beautiful things on earth, joyous, innocent, half divine,
useless, say they who are wiser than God.
Bebee went home and worked among her flowers.
A little laborious figure, with her petticoats twisted high, and her feet
wet with the night dews, and her back bowed to the hoeing and clipping
and raking among the blossoming plants.
"How late you are working to-night, Bebee!" one or two called out, as
they passed the gate. She looked up and smiled; but went on working while
the white moon rose.
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