roofs of Christiania and Stromsoeon.

In the little dark attic there was a very old woman in a red petticoat
and a high cap, who sat against the window, and pricked out lace
patterns with a pin on thick paper. She was eighty-five years old, and
could hardly keep body and soul together.

Bebee, running to her, kissed her.

"O mother Annemie, look here! Beautiful red and white currants, and a
roll; I saved them for you. They are the first currants we have seen
this year. Me? oh, for me, I have eaten more than are good! You know I
pick fruit like a sparrow, always. Dear mother Annemie, are you better?
Are you quite sure you are better to-day?"

The little old withered woman, brown as a walnut and meagre as a rush,
took the currants, and smiled with a childish glee, and began to eat
them, blessing the child with each crumb she broke off the bread.

"Why had you not a grandmother of your own, my little one?" she mumbled.
"How good you would have been to her, Bebee?"

"Yes," said Bebee seriously, but her mind could not grasp the idea. It
was easier for her to believe the fanciful lily-parentage of Antoine's
stories. "How much work have you done, Annemie? Oh, all that? all that?
But there is enough for a week. You work too early and too late, you
dear Annemie."

"Nay, Bebee, when one has to get one's bread, that cannot be. But I am
afraid my eyes are failing. That rose now, is it well done?"

"Beautifully done. Would the Baes take them if they were not? You know
he is one that cuts every centime in four pieces."

"Ah! sharp enough, sharp enough--that is true. But I am always afraid of
my eyes. I do not see the flags out there so well as I used to do."

"Because the sun is so bright, Annemie; that is all. I myself, when I
have been sitting all day in the Place in the light, the flowers look
pale to me. And you know it is not age with _me_, Annemie?"

The old woman and the young girl laughed together at that droll idea.

"You have a merry heart, dear little one," said old Annemie. "The saints
keep it to you always."

"May I tidy the room a little?"

"To be sure, dear, and thank you too. I have not much time, you see; and
somehow my back aches badly when I stoop."

"And it is so damp here for you, over all that water!" said Bebee, as
she swept and dusted and set to rights the tiny place, and put in a
little broken pot a few sprays of honeysuckle and rosemary that she had
brought with her. "It is so damp here. You