in the moments of her leisure with her blue eyes on the far-away clouds
like a thing in a dream.

She heard them patiently till the cackle of shrill voices had exhausted
itself, and the six women stood on the sunny mud floor of the hut eyeing
each other with venomous glances; for though they were good neighbors at
all times, each, in this matter, was hungry for the advantages to be got
out of old Antoine's plot of ground. They were very poor; they toiled in
the scorched or frozen fields all weathers, or spent from dawn to
nightfall poring over their cobweb lace; and to save a son or gain a
cabbage was of moment to them only second to the keeping of their souls
secure of heaven by Lenten mass and Easter psalm.

Bébée listened to them all, and the tears dried on her cheeks, and her
pretty rosebud lips curled close in one another.

"You are very good, no doubt, all of you," she said at last. "But I
cannot tell you that I am thankful, for my heart is like a stone, and I
think it is not so very much for me as it is for the hut that you are
speaking. Perhaps it is wrong in me to say so; yes, I am wrong, I am
sure,--you are all kind, and I am only Bébée. But you see he told me to
live here and take care of the flowers, and I must do it, that is
certain. I will ask Father Francis, if you wish: but if he tells me I am
wrong, as you do. I shall stay here all the same."

And in answer to their expostulations and condemnation, she only said the
same thing over again always, in different words, but to the same
steadfast purpose. The women clamored about her for an hour in reproach
and rebuke; she was a baby indeed, she was a little fool, she was a
naughty, obstinate child, she was an ungrateful, wilful little creature,