said one of the hen wives; and the little cross woman with the pedler's
tray added a waxen St. Agnes, colored red and yellow to the very life no
doubt; and the old Cheap John had saved her a cage for the starling; and
the tinker had a cream cheese for her in a vine-leaf, and the sweetmeat
seller brought her a beautiful gilded horn of sugarplums, and the cobbler
had made her actually a pair of shoes--red shoes, beautiful shoes to go
to mass in and be a wonder in to all the neighborhood. And they thronged
round her, and adored the silver waist buckles; and when Bébée got fairly
to her stall, and traffic began, she thought once more that nobody's
feast day had ever dawned like hers.

When the chimes began to ring all over the city, she could hardly believe
that the carillon was not saying its "Laus Deo" with some special meaning
in its bells of her.

The morning went by as usual; the noise of the throngs about her like a
driving of angry winds, but no more hurting her than the angels on the
roof of St. Gudule are hurt by the storm when it breaks.

Hard words, fierce passions, low thoughts, evil deeds, passed by the
child without resting on her; her heart was in her flowers, and was like
one of them with the dew of daybreak on it.

There were many strangers in the city, and such are always sure to loiter
in the Spanish square; and she sold fast and well her lilacs and her
roses, and her knots of thyme and sweetbrier.

She was always a little sorry to see them go, her kindly pretty playmates
that, nine times out of ten no doubt, only drooped and died in the hands
that purchased them, as human souls soil and shrivel in the grasp of the