ut
into the air with her.

It was dark already, but in the square there was still the cool bright
primrose-colored evening light.

Bebee's wooden shoes went pattering down the sloping and uneven stones.
Her little gray figure ran quickly through the deep shade cast from the
towers and walls. Her dreams had drifted away. She was thinking of the
children and the cake.

"You are in such a hurry because of the cake?" said her new customer, as
he followed her.

Bebee looked back at him with a smile in her blue eyes.

"Yes, they will be waiting, you know, and there are cherries too."

"It is a grand day with you, then?"

"It is my fete day: I am sixteen."

She was proud of this. She told it to the very dogs in the street.

"Ah, you feel old, I dare say?"

"Oh, quite old! They cannot call me a child any more."

"Of course not, it would be ridiculous. Are those presents in your
basket?"

"Yes, every one of them." She paused a moment to lift the dead
vine-leaves, and show him the beautiful shining red shoes. "Look! old
Gringoire gave me these. I shall wear them at mass next Sunday. I never
had a pair of shoes in my life."

"But how will you wear shoes without stockings?"

It was a snake cast into her Eden.

She had never thought of it.

"Perhaps I can save money and buy some," she answered after a sad little
pause. "But that I could not do till next year. They would cost several
francs, I suppose."

"Unless a good fairy gives them to you?"

Bebee smiled; fairies were real things to her--relations indeed. She did
not imagine that he spoke in jest.

"Sometimes I pray very much and things come," she said softly. "When the
Gloire de Dijon was cut back too soon one summer, and never blossomed,
and we all thought it was dead, I prayed all day long for it, and never
thought of anything else; and by autumn it was all in new leaf, and now
its flowers are finer than ever."

"But you watered it whilst you prayed, I suppose?"

The sarcasm escaped her.

She was wondering to herself whether it would be vain and wicked to pray
for a pair of stockings: she thought she would go and ask Father Francis.

By this time they were in the Rue Royale, and half-way down it. The
lamps were lighted. A regiment was marching up it with a band playing.
The windows were open, and people were laughing and singing in some of
them. The light caught the white and gilded fronts of the houses. The
pleasure-seeking crowds loitered along