basket?"

"Yes, every one of them." She paused a moment to lift the dead
vine-leaves, and show him the beautiful shining red shoes. "Look! old
Gringoire gave me these. I shall wear them at mass next Sunday. I never
had a pair of shoes in my life."

"But how will you wear shoes without stockings?"

It was a snake cast into her Eden.

She had never thought of it.

"Perhaps I can save money and buy some," she answered after a sad little
pause. "But that I could not do till next year. They would cost several
francs, I suppose."

"Unless a good fairy gives them to you?"

Bébée smiled; fairies were real things to her--relations indeed. She did
not imagine that he spoke in jest.

"Sometimes I pray very much and things come," she said softly. "When the
Gloire de Dijon was cut back too soon one summer, and never blossomed,
and we all thought it was dead, I prayed all day long for it, and never
thought of anything else; and by autumn it was all in new leaf, and now
its flowers are finer than ever."

"But you watered it whilst you prayed, I suppose?"