Teniers or Mieris might have jumped to before an alehouse at the
Kermesse; Bébée and the children joined hands, and danced round together
in the broad white moonlight, on the grass by the water-side; the idlers
came and sat about, the women netting or spinning, and the men smoking a
pipe before bedtime; the rough hearty Flemish bubbled like a brook in
gossip, or rung like a horn over a jest; Bébée and the children, tired of
their play, grew quiet, and chanted together the "Ave Maria Stella
Virginis"; a nightingale among the willows sang to the sleeping swans.

All was happy, quiet, homely; lovely also in its simple way.

They went early to their beds, as people must do who rise at dawn.

Bébée leaned out a moment from her own little casement ere she too went
to rest.

Through an open lattice there sounded the murmur of some little child's
prayer; the wind sighed among the willows; the nightingales sang on in
the dark--all was still.

Hard work awaited her on the morrow, and on all the other days of the
year.

She was only a little peasant--she must sweep, and spin, and dig, and
delve, to get daily her bit of black bread,--but that night she was as
happy as a little princess in a fairy tale; happy in her playmates, in
her flowers, in her sixteen years, in her red shoes, in her silver
buckles, because she was half a woman; happy in the dewy leaves, in the
singing birds, in the hush of the night, in the sense of rest, in the
fragrance of flowers, in the drifting changes of moon and cloud; happy