h the short daylight for next to nothing at all;
for there are so many women in Brabant, and every one of them, young or
old, can make lace, and if one do not like the pitiful wage, one may
leave it and go and die, for what the master lacemakers care or know;
there will always be enough, many more than enough, to twist the thread
round the bobbins, and weave the bridal veils, and the trains for the
courts.

"And besides, if I can save a centime, the Varnhart children ought to
have it," thought Bebee, as she swept the dust together. It was so
selfish of her to be dreaming about a pair of stockings, when those
little things often went for days on a stew of nettles.

So she looked at her own pretty feet,--pretty and slender, and arched,
rosy, and fair, and uncramped by the pressure of leather,--and resigned
her day-dream with a brave heart, as she put up her broom and went out to
weed, and hoe, and trim, and prune the garden that had been for once
neglected the night before.

"One could not move half so easily in stockings," she thought with true
philosophy as she worked among the black, fresh, sweet-smelling mould,
and kissed a rose now and then as she passed one.

When she got into the city that day, her rush-bottomed chair, which was
always left upside down in case rain should fall in the night, was set
ready for her, and on its seat was a gay, gilded box, such as rich people
give away full of bonbons.

Bebee stood and looked from the box to the Broodhuis, from the Broodhuis
to the box; she glanced around, but no one had come there so early as
she, except the tinker, who was busy quarrelling with his wife and
letting his smelting fire burn a hole in his breeches.

"The box was certainly for her, since it was set upon her chair?"--Bebee
pondered a moment; then little by little opened the lid.

Within, on a nest of rose-satin, were two pair of silk stockings!--real
silk!--with the prettiest clocks worked up their sides in color!

Bebee gave a little scream, and stood still, the blood hot in her cheeks;
no one heard her, the tinker's wife, who alone was near, having just
wished Heaven to send a judgment on her husband, was busy putting out his
smoking smallclothes. It is a way that women and wives have, and they
never see the bathos of it.

The place filled gradually.

The customary crowds gathered. The business of the day began underneath
the multitudinous tones of the chiming bells. Bebee's business began too;