read?"

"I will tell you a better story. Lock your hut, Bebee, and come."

"And to think you are not ashamed!"

"Ashamed?"

"Yes, because of my wooden shoes."

Was it possible? Bebee thought, as she ran out into the garden and
locked the door behind her, and pushed the key under the waterbutt as
usual, being quite content with that prudent precaution against robbers
which had served Antoine all his days. Was it possible, this wonderful
joy?--her cheeks were like her roses, her eyes had a brilliance like the
sun; the natural grace and mirth of the child blossomed in a thousand
ways and gestures.

As she went by the shrine in the wall, she bent her knee a moment and
made the sign of the cross; then she gathered a little moss-rose that
nodded close under the border of the palisade, and turned and gave it to
him.

"Look, she sends you this. She is not angry, you see, and it is much more
pleasure when she is pleased--do you not know?"

He shrank a little as her fingers touched him.

"What a pity you had no mother, Bebee!" he said, on an impulse of
emotion, of which in Paris he would have been more ashamed than
of any guilt.

CHAPTER XV.

In the deserted lane by the swans' water, under the willows, the
horses waited to take him to Mechlin; little, quick, rough horses, with
round brass bells, in the Flemish fashion, and gay harness, and a low
char-a-banc, in which a wolf-skin and red rugs, and all a painter's many
necessities, were tossed together.

He lifted her in, and the little horses flew fast through the green
country, ringing chimes at each step, till they plunged into the deep
glades of the woods of Cambre and Soignies.

Bebee sat breathless with delight.

She had never gone behind horses in all her life, except once or twice
in a wagon when the tired teamsters had dragged a load of corn across
the plains, or when the miller's old gray mare had hobbled wearily before
a cart-load of noisy, happy, mischievous children going home from the
masses and fairs, and flags, and flowers, and church banners, and
puppet-shows, and lighted altars, and whirling merry-go-rounds of the
Fete Dieu.

She had never known what it was to sail as on the wings of the wind along
broad roads, with yellow wheat-lands, and green hedges, and wayside
trees, and little villages, and reedy canal water, all flying by her to
the sing-song of the joyous bells.

"Oh, how good it is to live!" she cried, clapping her hands in