wrong to lie to any one, even to a little thing like me; and I am only
Bébée, and cannot give you anything back, because I have only just enough
to feed myself and the starling, and not always that in winter. I thank
you very much for what you wished to do; but if I had taken those things,
I think you would have thought me very mean and full of greed; and
Antoine always said, 'Do not take what you cannot pay--not ever what you
cannot pay--that is the way to walk with pure feet.' Perhaps I spoke ill,
because they spoil me, and they say I am too swift to say my mind. But I
am not thankless--not thankless, indeed--it is only I could not take what
I cannot pay. That is all. You are angry still--not now--no?"

There was, anxiety in the pleading. What did it matter to her what a
stranger thought?

And yet Bébée's heart was heavy as he laughed a little coldly, and bade
her good day, and left her alone to go out of the city homewards. A sense
of having done wrong weighed on her; of having been rude and ungrateful.

She had no heart for the children that evening. Mère Krebs was sitting
out before her door shelling peas, and called to her to come in and have
a drop of coffee. Krebs had come in from Vilvöorde fair, and brought a
stock of rare good berries with him. But Bébée thanked her, and went on
to her own garden to work.

She had always liked to sit out on the quaint wooden steps of the mill
and under the red shadow of the sails, watching the swallows flutter to
and fro in the sunset, and hearing the droll frogs croak in the rushes,
while the old people told her tales of the time of how in their babyhood
they had run out, fearful yet fascinated, to see the beautiful Scots
Grays flash by in the murky night, and the endless line of guns and