Old Antoine's hut stood in a little patch of garden ground with a brier
hedge all round it, in that byway which lies between Laeken and Brussels,
in the heart of flat, green Brabant, where there are beautiful meadows
and tall, flowering hedges, and forest trees, and fern-filled ditches,
and a little piece of water, deep and cool, where the swans sail all day
long, and the silvery willows dip and sway with the wind.

Turn aside from the highway, and there it lies to-day, and all the place
brims over with grass, and boughs, and blossoms, and flowering beans, and
wild dog-roses; and there are a few cottages and cabins there near the
pretty water, and farther there is an old church, sacred to St. Guido;
and beyond go the green level country and the endless wheat-fields, and
the old mills with their red sails against the sun; and beyond all these
the pale blue, sea-like horizon of the plains of Flanders.

It was a pretty little hut, pink all over like a sea-shell, in the
fashion that the Netherlanders love; and its two little square lattices
were dark with creeping plants and big rose-bushes, and its roof, so low
that you could touch it, was golden and green with all the lichens and
stoneworts that are known on earth.

Here Bébée grew from year to year; and soon learned to be big enough and
hardy enough to tie up bunches of stocks and pinks for the market, and
then to carry a basket for herself, trotting by Antoine's side along the
green roadway and into the white, wide streets; and in the market the
buyers--most often of all when they were young mothers--would seek out
the little golden head and the beautiful frank blue eyes, and buy Bébée's
lilies and carnations whether they wanted them or not. So that old Mäes
used to cross himself and say that, thanks to Our Lady, trade was thrice
as stirring since the little one had stretched out her rosy fingers with