There was a kid bleating in the shed. There was a thrush singing in the
dusk of the sycamore leaves. There was a calf lowing to its mother away
there beyond the fence. There were dreamy muffled bells ringing in the
distance from many steeples and belfries where the city was; they all
said one thing, "How good it is to be so old as that--how good, how very
good!"

Bébée was very pretty.

No one in all Brabant ever denied that. To look at her it seemed as if
she had so lived among the flowers that she had grown like them, and only
looked a bigger blossom--that was all.

She wore two little wooden shoes and a little cotton cap, and a gray
kirtle--linen in summer, serge in winter; but the little feet in the
shoes were like rose leaves, and the cap was as white as a lily, and the
gray kirtle was like the bark of the bough that the apple-blossom parts,
and peeps out of, to blush in the sun.

The flowers had been the only godmothers that she had ever had, and fairy
godmothers too.

The marigolds and the sunflowers had given her their ripe, rich gold to
tint her hair; the lupins and irises had lent their azure to her eyes;
the moss-rosebuds had made her pretty mouth; the arum lilies had uncurled
their softness for her skin; and the lime-blossoms had given her their
frank, fresh, innocent fragrance.

The winds had blown, and the rains had rained, and the sun had shone on