Old people say the same thing often, but they sigh when they say it.
Bebee smiled.

Mere Krebs opened her door in the next cottage, and nodded over the wall.

"What a fine thing to be sixteen!--a merry year, Bebee."

Marthe, the carpenter's wife, came out from her gate, broom in hand.

"The Holy Saints keep you, Bebee; why, you are quite a woman now!"

The little children of Varnhart, the charcoal-burner, 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, Bebee! 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 you--all for
you; but you will let us come and eat it too?"

Old Gran'mere Bishot, who was the oldest woman about Laeken, hobbled
through the grass on her crutches and nodded her white shaking head, and
smiled at Bebee.

"I have nothing to give you, little one, except my blessing, if you care
for that."

Bebee ran out, breaking from the children, and knelt down in the wet
grass, and bent her pretty sunny head to the benediction.

Trine, the miller's 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, Bebee! Come up, and here is my
first dish of cherries for you; not tasted one myself; they will make you
a feast with Varnhart's cake, though she should have known better, so
poor as she is. Charity begins at home, and these children's stomachs are
empty."

Bebee 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 charcoal-burner's
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 apple-trees, or their tall beans, or
their hedges of thorn between them; you may ride by and never notice them
if y