r dull?"

"I have no time, and I do not think I would be if I had time--there is so
much to think of, and one never can understand."

"But you must be very brave and laborious to do all your work yourself.
Is it possible a child like you can spin, and wash, and bake, and garden,
and do everything?"

"Oh, many do more than I. Babette's eldest daughter is only twelve, and
she does much more, because she has all the children to look after; and
they are very, very poor; they often have nothing but a stew of nettles
and perhaps a few snails, days together."

"That is lean, bare, ugly, gruesome poverty; there is plenty of that
everywhere. But you, Bebee--you are an idyll."

Bebee looked across the hut and smiled, and broke her thread. She did not
know what he meant, but if she were anything that pleased him, it was
well.

"Who were those beautiful women?" she said suddenly, the color mounting
into her cheeks.

"What women, my dear?"

"Those I saw at the window with you, the other night--they had jewels."

"Oh!--women, tiresome enough. If I had seen you, I would have dropped you
some fruit. Poor little Bebee! Did you go by, and I never knew?"

"You were laughing--"

"Was I?"

"Yes, and they _were_ beautiful."

"In their own eyes; not in mine."

"No?"

She stopped her spinning and gazed at him with wistful, wondering eyes.
Could it be that they were not beautiful to him? those deep red, glowing,
sun-basked dahlia flowers?

"Do you know," she said very softly, with a flush of penitence that came
and went, "when I saw them, I hated them; I confessed it to Father
Francis next day. You seemed so content with, them, and they looked so
gay and glad there--and then the jewels! Somehow, I seemed to myself such
a little thing, and so ugly and mean. And yet, do you know--"

"And yet--well?"

"They did not look to me good--those women," said Bebee, thoughtfully,
looking across at him in deprecation of his possible anger. "They were
great people, I suppose, and they appeared very happy; but though I
seemed nothing to myself after them, still I think I would not change."

"You are wise without books, Bebee."

"Oh, no, I am not wise at all. I only feel. And give me books; oh, pray,
give me books! You do not know; I will learn so fast; and I will not
neglect anything, that I promise. The neighbors and Jeannot say that I
shall let the flowers die, and the hut get dirty, and never spin or prick
Annemie's patterns; but