r red sails against the sun; and beyond all these
the pale blue, sea-like horizon of the plains of Flanders.

It was a pretty little hut, pink all over like a sea-shell, in the
fashion that the Netherlanders love; and its two little square lattices
were dark with creeping plants and big rose-bushes, and its roof, so low
that you could touch it, was golden and green with all the lichens and
stoneworts that are known on earth.

Here Bebee grew from year to year; and soon learned to be big enough and
hardy enough to tie up bunches of stocks and pinks for the market, and
then to carry a basket for herself, trotting by Antoine's side along the
green roadway and into the white, wide streets; and in the market the
buyers--most often of all when they were young mothers--would seek out
the little golden head and the beautiful frank blue eyes, and buy Bebee's
lilies and carnations whether they wanted them or not. So that old Maees
used to cross himself and say that, thanks to Our Lady, trade was thrice
as stirring since the little one had stretched out her rosy fingers with
the flowers.

All the same, however stirring trade might be in summer, when the long
winters came and the Montagne de la Cour was a sharp slope of ice, and
the pinnacles of St. Gudule were all frosted white with snow, and the
hot-house flowers alone could fill the market, and the country gardens
were bitter black wind-swept desolations where the chilly roots huddled
themselves together underground like homeless children in a cellar,--then
the money gained in the time of leaf and blossom was all needed to buy a
black loaf and fagot of wood; and many a day in the little pink hut Bebee
rolled herself up in her bed like a dormouse, to forget in sleep that she
was supperless and as cold as a frozen robin.

So that when Antoine Maees grew sick and died, more from age and weakness
than any real disease, there were only a few silver crowns in the brown
jug hidden in the thatch; and the hut itself, with its patch of ground,
was all that he could leave to Bebee.

"Live in it, little one, and take nobody in it to worry you, and be good
to the bird and the goat, and be sure to keep the flowers blowing," said
the old man with his last breath; and sobbing her heart out by his
bedside, Bebee vowed to do his bidding.

She was not quite fourteen then, and when she had laid her old friend to
rest in the rough green graveyard about St. Guido, she was very sorrowful
and lon