But this dull day Bébée did not go down upon the wharf; she did not want
the sailors' tales; she saw the masts and the bits of bunting that
streamed from them, and they made her restless, which they had never done
before.

Instead she went in at a dark old door and climbed up a steep staircase
that went up and up, as though she were mounting St. Gudule's belfry
towers; and at the top of it entered a little chamber in the roof, where
one square unglazed hole that served for light looked out upon the canal,
with all its crowded craft, from the dainty schooner yacht, fresh as
gilding and holystone could make her, that was running for pleasure to
the Scheldt, to the rude, clumsy coal barge, black as night, that bore
the rough diamonds of Belgium to the snow-buried roofs of Christiania and
Stromstad.

In the little dark attic there was a very old woman in a red petticoat
and a high cap, who sat against the window, and pricked out lace patterns
with a pin on thick paper. She was eighty-five years old, and could
hardly keep body and soul together.

Bébée, running to her, kissed her. "Oh, mother Annémie, look here!
Beautiful red and white currants, and a roll; I saved them for you. They
are the first currants we have seen this year. Me? oh, for me, I have
eaten more than are good! You know I pick fruit like a sparrow, always.
Dear mother Annémie, are you better? Are you quite sure you are better
to-day?"

The little old withered woman, brown as a walnut and meagre as a rush,
took the currants, and smiled with a childish glee, and began to eat