But this dull day Bebee 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.

Bebee, running to her, kissed her.  “Oh, mother Annemie, 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 Annemie, 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 them, blessing the child with each crumb she broke off the bread.

“Why had you not a grandmother of your own, my little one?” she mumbled.  “How good you would have been to her, Bebee!”

“Yes,” said Bebee seriously, but her mind could not grasp the idea.  It was easier for her to believe the fanciful lily parentage of Antoine’s stories.  “How much work have you done, Annemie?  Oh, all that? all that?  But there is enough for a week.  You work too early and too late, you dear Annemie.”

“Nay, Bebee, when one has to get one’s bread that cannot be.  But I am afraid my eyes are failing.  That rose now, is it well done?”

“Beautifully done.  Would the Baes take them if they were not?  You know he is one that cuts every centime in four pieces.”

“Ah! sharp enough, sharp enough, that is true.  But I am always afraid of my eyes.  I do not see the flags out there so well as I used to do.”

“Because the sun is so bright, Annemie; that is all.  I myself, when I have been sitting all day in the place in the light, the flowers look pale to me.  And you know it is not age with me, Annemie?”

The old woman and the young girl laughed together at that droll idea.

“You have a merry heart, dear little one,” said old Annemie.  “The saints keep it to you always.”

“May I tidy the room a little?”