CHAPTER V.

“If I could save a centime a day, I could buy a pair of stockings this time next year,” thought Bebee, locking her shoes with her other treasures in her drawer the next morning, and taking her broom and pail to wash down her little palace.

But a centime a day is a great deal in Brabant, when one has not always enough for bare bread, and when, in the long chill winter, one must weave thread lace all through the short daylight for next to nothing at all; for there are so many women in Brabant, and every one of them, young or old, can make lace, and if one do not like the pitiful wage, one may leave it and go and die, for what the master lacemakers care or know; there will always be enough, many more than enough, to twist the thread round the bobbins, and weave the bridal veils, and the trains for the courts.

“And besides, if I can save a centime, the Varnhart children ought to have it,” thought Bebee, as she swept the dust together.  It was so selfish of her to be dreaming about a pair of stockings, when those little things often went for days on a stew of nettles.

So she looked at her own pretty feet,—­pretty and slender, and arched, rosy, and fair, and uncramped by the pressure of leather,—­and resigned her day-dream with a brave heart, as she put up her broom and went out to weed, and hoe, and trim, and prune the garden that had been for once neglected the night before.

“One could not move half so easily in stockings,” she thought with true philosophy as she worked among the black, fresh, sweet-smelling mould, and kissed a rose now and then as she passed one.

When she got into the city that day, her rush-bottomed chair, which was always left upside down in case rain should fall in the night, was set ready for her, and on its seat was a gay, gilded box, such as rich people give away full of bonbons.

Bebee stood and looked from the box to the Broodhuis, from the Broodhuis to the box; she glanced around, but no one had come there so early as she, except the tinker, who was busy quarrelling with his wife and letting his smelting fire burn a hole in his breeches.

“The box was certainly for her, since it was set upon her chair?”—­Bebee pondered a moment; then little by little opened the lid.

Within, on a nest of rose-satin, were two pair of silk stockings!—­real silk!—­with the prettiest clocks worked up their sides in color!

Bebee gave a little scream, and stood still, the blood hot in her cheeks; no one heard her, the tinker’s wife, who alone was near, having just wished Heaven to send a judgment on her husband, was busy putting out his smoking smallclothes.  It is a way that women and wives have, and they never see the bathos of it.

The place filled gradually.

The customary crowds gathered.  The business of the day began underneath the multitudinous tones of the chiming bells.  Bebee’s business began too; she put the box behind her with a beating heart, and tied up her flowers.