pipe before bedtime; the rough hearty Flemish bubbled like a brook in
gossip, or rung like a horn over a jest; Bebee and the children, tired of
their play, grew quiet, and chanted together the "Ave Maria Stella
Virginis"; a nightingale among the willows sang to the sleeping swans.

All was happy, quiet, homely; lovely also in its simple way.

They went early to their beds, as people must do who rise at dawn.

Bebee leaned out a moment from her own little casement ere she too went
to rest.

Through an open lattice there sounded the murmur of some little child's
prayer; the wind sighed among the willows; the nightingales sang on in
the dark--all was still.

Hard work awaited her on the morrow, and on all the other days of the
year.

She was only a little peasant--she must sweep, and spin, and dig, and
delve, to get daily her bit of black bread,--but that night she was as
happy as a little princess in a fairy tale; happy in her playmates, in
her flowers, in her sixteen years, in her red shoes, in her silver
buckles, because she was half a woman; happy in the dewy leaves, in the
singing birds, in the hush of the night, in the sense of rest, in the
fragrance of flowers, in the drifting changes of moon and cloud; happy
because she was half a woman, because she was half a poet, because
she was wholly a poet.

"Oh, dear swans, how good it is to be sixteen!--how good it is to live at
all!--do you not tell the willows so?" said Bebee to the gleam of silver
under the dark leaves by the water's side, which showed her where her
friends were sleeping, with their snowy wings closed over their stately
heads, and the veiled gold and ruby of their eyes.

The swans did not awake to answer.

Only the nightingale answered from the willows, with Desdemona's song.

But Bebee had never heard of Desdemona, and the willows had no sigh for
her.

"Good night!" she said, softly, to all the green dewy sleeping world, and
then she lay down and slept herself.--The nightingale sang on, and the
willows trembled.

CHAPTER V.

"If I could save a centime a day, I could buy a pair of stockings this
time next year," thought Bebee, locking her shoes with her other
treasures in her drawer the next morning, and taking her broom and pail
to wash down her little palace.

But a centime a day is a great deal in Brabant, when one has not always
enough for bare bread, and when, in the long chill winter, one must weave
thread lace all throug