rvings, and blazoned windows, and
majestic scutcheons, and fantastic pinnacles. That Bebee did not know,
but she loved it, and she sat resolutely in front of the Broodhuis,
selling her flowers, smiling, chatting, helping the old woman, counting
her little gains, eating her bit of bread at noonday like any other
market girl, but at times glancing up to the stately towers and the blue
sky, with a look on her face that made the old tinker and cobbler whisper
together, "What does she see there?--the dead people or the angels?"

The truth was that even Bebee herself did not know very surely what she
saw--something that was still nearer to her than even this kindly crowd
that loved her. That was all she could have said had anybody asked her.

But none did.

No one wanted to hear what the dead said; and for the angels, the tinker
and the cobbler were of opinion that one had only too much of them
sculptured about everywhere, and shining on all the casements--in
reverence be it spoken, of course.

CHAPTER III.

"I remembered it was your name-day, child Here are half a dozen eggs,"
said one of the hen wives; and the little cross woman with the pedler's
tray added a waxen St. Agnes, colored red and yellow to the very life no
doubt; and the old Cheap John had saved her a cage for the starling; and
the tinker had a cream cheese for her in a vine-leaf, and the sweetmeat
seller brought her a beautiful gilded horn of sugarplums, and the cobbler
had made her actually a pair of shoes--red shoes, beautiful shoes to go
to mass in and be a wonder in to all the neighborhood. And they thronged
round her, and adored the silver waist buckles; and when Bebee got fairly
to her stall, and traffic began, she thought once more that nobody's
feast day had ever dawned like hers.

When the chimes began to ring all over the city, she could hardly believe
that the carillon was not saying its "Laus Deo" with some special meaning
in its bells of her.

The morning went by as usual; the noise of the throngs about her like a
driving of angry winds, but no more hurting her than the angels on the
roof of St. Gudule are hurt by the storm when it breaks.

Hard words, fierce passions, low thoughts, evil deeds, passed by the
child without resting on her; her heart was in her flowers, and was like
one of them with the dew of daybreak on it.

There were many strangers in the city, and such are always sure to loiter
in the Spanish square; and she sol