f standing
corn,--only in the field she would have tarried for poppies, and in the
town she tarried for no one.

She dealt with men as with women, simply, truthfully, frankly, with the
innocent fearlessness of a child. When they told her she was pretty, she
smiled; it was just as they said that her flowers were sweet.

But this man's hands moved so swiftly; and as she saw her Broodhuis
growing into color and form beneath them, she could not choose but look
now and then, and twice she gave her change wrong.

He spoke to her rarely, and sketched on and on in rapid bold strokes the
quaint graces and massive richness of the Maison du Roi.

There is no crowd so busy in Brabant that it will not find leisure to
stare. The Fleming or the Walloon has nothing of the Frenchman's
courtesy; he is rough and rude; he remains a peasant even when town bred,
and the surly insolence of the "Gueux" is in him still. He is kindly to
his fellows, though not to beasts; he is shrewd, patient, thrifty,
industrious, and good in very many ways, but civil never.

A good score of them left off their occupations and clustered round the
painter, staring, chattering, pushing, pointing, as though a brush had
never been seen in all the land of Rubens.

Bebee, ashamed of her people, got up from her chair and rebuked them.

"Oh, men of Brussels; fie then for shame!" she called to them as
clearly as a robin sings. "Did never you see a drawing before? and are
there not saints and martyrs enough to look at in the galleries? and have
you never some better thing to do than to gape wide-mouthed at a
stranger? What laziness--ah! Just worthy of a people who sleep and smoke
while their dogs work for them! Go away, all of you; look, there comes
the gendarme--it will be the worse for you. Sir, sit under my stall; they
will not dare trouble you then."

He moved under the awning, thanking her with a smile; and the people,
laughing, shuffled unwillingly aside and let him paint on in peace. It
was only little Bebee, but they had spoilt the child from her infancy,
and were used to obey her.

The painter took a long time. He set about it with the bold ease of one
used to all the intricacies of form and color, and he had the skill of a
master. But he spent more than half the time looking idly at the humors
of the populace or watching how the treasures of Bebee's garden
went away one by one in the hands of strangers.

Meanwhile, ever and again, sitting on the edge