in the warmth of the evening.

Bebee, suddenly roused from her thoughts by the loud challenge of the
military music, looked round on the stranger, and motioned him back.

"Sir,--I do not know you,--why should you come with me? Do not do it,
please. You make me talk, and that makes me late."

And she pushed her basket farther on her arm, and nodded to him and ran
off--as fleetly as a hare through fern--among the press of the people.

"To-morrow, little one," he answered her with a careless smile, and let
her go unpursued. Above, from the open casement of a cafe, some young men
and some painted women leaned out, and threw sweetmeats at him, as in
carnival time.

"A new model,--that pretty peasant?" they asked him.

He laughed in answer, and went up the steps to join them; he dropped the
moss-roses as he went, and trod on them, and did not wait.

CHAPTER IV

Bebee ran home as fast as her feet would take her.

The children were all gathered about her gate in the dusky dewy evening;
they met her with shouts of welcome and reproach intermingled; they had
been watching for her since first the sun had grown low and red, and now
the moon was risen.

But they forgave her when they saw the splendor of her presents, and she
showered out among them Pere Melchior's horn of comfits.

They dashed into the hut; they dragged the one little table out among the
flowers; the cherries and cake were spread on it; and the miller's wife
had given a big jug of milk, and Father Francis himself had sent some
honeycomb.

The early roses were full of scent in the dew; the great gillyflowers
breathed\out fragrance in the dusk; the goat came and nibbled the
sweetbrier unrebuked; the children repeated the Flemish bread-grace, with
clasped hands and reverent eyes, "Oh, dear little Jesus, come and sup
with us, and bring your beautiful Mother, too; we will not forget you are
God." Then, that said, they ate, and drank, and laughed, and picked
cherries from each other's mouths like little blackbirds; the big white
dog gnawed a crust at their feet; old Krebs who had a fiddle, and could
play it, came out and trilled them rude and ready Flemish tunes, such as
Teniers or Mieris might have jumped to before an alehouse at the
Kermesse; Bebee and the children joined hands, and danced round together
in the broad white moonlight, on the grass by the water-side; the idlers
came and sat about, the women netting or spinning, and the men smoking a