would have taken up a knife to slit her throat.

They talked themselves hoarse with impatience and chagrin, and went
backwards over the threshold, their wooden shoes and their shrill voices
keeping a clattering chorus. By this time it was evening; the sun had
gone off the floor, and the bird had done singing.

Bébée stood in the same place, hardening her little heart, whilst big and
bitter tears swelled into her eyes, and fell on the soft fur of the
sleeping cat.

She only very vaguely understood why it was in any sense shameful to have
been raked out of the water-lilies like a drowning field mouse, as they
had said it was.

She and Antoine had often talked of that summer morning when he had found
her there among the leaves, and Bébée and he had laughed over it gayly,
and she had been quite proud in her innocent fashion that she had had a
fairy and the flowers for her mother and godmothers, which Antoine always
told her was the case beyond any manner of doubt. Even Father Francis,
hearing the pretty harmless fiction, had never deemed it his duty to
disturb her pleasure in it, being a good, cheerful old man, who thought
that woe and wisdom both come soon enough to bow young shoulders and
to silver young curls without his interference.

Bébée had always thought it quite a fine thing to have been born of
water-lilies, with the sun for her father, and when people in Brussels
had asked her of her parentage, seeing her stand in the market with a
certain look on her that was not like other children, had always gravely
answered in the purest good faith,--