was she too familiar with the holy mother? she was almost fearful that she was; but then the holy mother loved flowers so well, bébée would not feel aloof from her, nor be afraid. when one cuts the best blossoms for her, and tries to be good, and never tells a lie, thought bébée, i am quite sure, as she loves the lilies, that she will never altogether forget me. so she said to the mother of christ fearlessly, and nothing doubting; and then rose for her daily work of cutting the flowers for the market in brussels. by the time her baskets were full, her fowls fed, her goat foddered, her starlings cage cleaned, her hut door locked, and her wooden shoes clattering on the sunny road into the city, bébée was almost content again, though ever and again, as she trod the familiar ways, the tears dimmed her eyes as she remembered that old antoine would never again hobble over the stones beside her. you are a little wilful one, and too young to live alone, said father francis, meeting her in the lane. but he did not scold her seriously, and she kept to her resolve; and the women, who were good at heart, took her back into favor again; and so bébée had her own way, and the fairies, or the saints, or both together, took care of her; and so it came to pass that all alone she heard the cock crow whilst it was dark, and woke to the grand and amazing truth that this warm, fragrant, dusky june morning found her full sixteen years old. chapter ii. the two years had not been all playtime any more than they had been all summer. when one has not father, or mother, or brother, and all ones friends have barely bread enough for themselves, life cannot be very easy, nor its crusts very many at any time. bébée had a cherubs mouth, and a dreamers eyes, and a poets thoughts sometimes in her own untaught and unconscious fashion. but all the same she was a little hardworking brabant peasant girl; up whilst the birds twittered in the dark; to bed when the red sun sank beyond the far blue line of the plains; she hoed, and dug, and watered, and planted her little plot; she kept her cabin as clean as a freshblossomed primrose; she milked her goat and swept her floor; she sat, all the warm days, in the town, selling her flowers, and in the winter time, when her garden yielded her nothing, she strained her sight over lacemaking in the city to get the small bit of food that stood between her and that hunger which to the poor means death. a hard life; very hard when hail and snow made the streets of brussels like slopes of ice; a little hard even in the gay summer time when she sat under the awning fronting the maison du roi; but all the time the child throve on it, and was happy, and dreamed of many graceful and gracious things whilst she was weeding among her lilies, or tracing the threads to and fro on her lace pillow. nowwhen she woke to the full sense of her wonderful sixteen yearsbébée, standing barefoot on the mud floor, was as pretty a sight as was to be seen betwixt scheldt and rhine. the sun had only left a soft warmth like an apricots on her white skin. her limbs, though strong as a mountain ponys, were slender and well shaped. her hair curled in shiny crumpled masses, and tumbled about her shoulders. her pretty round plump little breast was white as the lilies in the grass without, and in this blooming time of her little life, bébée, in her way, was beautiful as a peachbloom is beautiful, and her innocent, courageous, happy eyes had dreams in them underneath their laughter, dreams that went farther than the green woods of laeken, farther even than the white clouds of summer. she could not move among them idly as poets and girls love to do; she had to be active amidst them, else drought and rain, and worm and snail, and blight and frost, would have made havoc of their fairest hopes. the loveliest love is that which dreams high above all storms, unsoiled by all burdens; but perhaps the strongest love is that which, whilst it adores, drags its feet through mire, and burns its brow in heat, for the thing beloved. so bébée dreamed in her garden; but all the time for sake of it hoed and dug, and hurt her hands, and tired her limbs, and bowed her shoulders under the great metal pails from the well. this wondrous morning, with the bright burden of her sixteen years upon her, she dressed herself quickly and fed her fowls, and, happy as a bird, went to sit on her little wooden stool in the doorway. there had been fresh rain in the night: the garden was radiant; the smell of the wet earth was sweeter than all perfumes that are burned in palaces. the dripping rosebuds nodded against her hair as she went out; the starling called to her, bébée, bébéebonjour, bonjour. these were all the words it knew. it said the same words a thousand times a week. but to bébée it seemed that the starling most certainly knew that she was sixteen years old that day. breaking her bread into the milk, she sat in the dawn and thought, without knowing that she thought it, how good it is to live when one is young! old people say the same thing often, but they sigh when they say it. bébée smiled. mère krebs opened her door in the next cottage, and nodded over the wall. what a fine thing to be sixteen!a merry year, bébée. marthe, the carpenters wife, came out from her gate, broom in hand. the holy saints keep you, bébée; why, you are quite a woman now! the little children of varnhart, the charcoalburner, who were as poor as any mouse in the old churches, rushed out of their little home up the lane, bringing with them a cake stuck full of sugar and seeds, and tied round with a blue ribbon, that their mother had made that very week, all in her honor. only see, bébée! such a grand cake! they shouted, dancing down the lane. jules picked the plums, and jeanne washed the almonds, and christine took the ribbon off her own communion cap, all for youall for you; but you will let us come and eat it too? old granmère bishot, who was the oldest woman about laeken, hobbled through the grass on her crutches and nodded her white shaking head, and smiled at bébée. i have nothing to give you, little one, except my blessing, if you care for that. bébée ran out, breaking from the children, and knelt down in the wet grass, and bent her pretty sunny head to the benediction. trine, the millers wife, the richest woman of them all, called to the child from the steps of the mill, a merry year, and the blessing of heaven, bébée! come up, and here is my first dish of cherries for you; not tasted one myself; they will make you a feast with varnharts cake, though she should have known better, so poor as she is. charity begins at home, and these childrens stomachs are empty. bébée ran up and then down again gleefully, with her lapful of big black cherries; tambour, the old white dog, who had used to drag her about in his milk cart, leaping on her in sympathy and congratulation. what a supper we will have! she cried to the charcoalburners children, who were turning somersaults in the dock leaves, while the swans stared and hissed. when one is sixteen, cherries and a cake have a flavor of paradise still, especially when they are tasted twice, or thrice at most, in all the year. an old man called to her as she went by his door. all these little cabins lie close together, with only their appletrees, or their tall beans, or their hedges of thorn between them; you may ride by and never notice them if you do not look for them under the leaves closely, as you would for thrushes nests. he, too, was very old; a lifelong neighbor and gossip of antoines; he had been a day laborer in these same fields all his years, and had never travelled farther than where the red millsails turned among the colza and the corn. come in, my pretty one, for a second, he whispered, with an air of mystery that made bébées heart quicken with expectancy. come in; i have something for you. they were my dead daughtersyou have heard me talk of herlisette, who died forty year or more ago, they say; for me i think it was yesterday. mère krebsshe is a hard womanheard me talking of my girl. she burst out laughing, lords sake, fool, why, your girl would be sixty now an she had lived. well, so it may be; you see, the new mill was put up the week she died, and you call the new mill old; but, my girl, she is young to me