So that when Antoine Maees grew sick and died, more from age and weakness than any real disease, there were only a few silver crowns in the brown jug hidden in the thatch; and the hut itself, with its patch of ground, was all that he could leave to Bebee.

“Live in it, little one, and take nobody in it to worry you, and be good to the bird and the goat, and be sure to keep the flowers blowing,” said the old man with his last breath; and sobbing her heart out by his bedside, Bebee vowed to do his bidding.

She was not quite fourteen then, and when she had laid her old friend to rest in the rough green graveyard about St. Guido, she was very sorrowful and lonely, poor little, bright Bebee, who had never hardly known a worse woe than to run the thorns of the roses into her fingers, or to cry because a thrush was found starved to death in the snow.

Bebee went home, and sat down in a corner and thought.

The hut was her own, and her own the little green triangle just then crowded with its Mayday blossom in all the colors of the rainbow.  She was to live in it, and never let the flowers die, so he had said; good, rough old ugly Antoine Maees, who had been to her as father, mother, country, king, and law.

The sun was shining.

Through the little square of the lattice she could see the great tulips opening in the grass and a bough of the apple-tree swaying in the wind.  A chaffinch clung to the bough, and swung to and fro singing.  The door stood open, with the broad, bright day beaming through; and Bebee’s little world came streaming in with it,—­the world which dwelt in the half-dozen cottages that fringed this green lane of hers like beavers’ nests pushed out under the leaves on to the water’s edge.

They came in, six or eight of them, all women; trim, clean, plain Brabant peasants, hard-working, kindly of nature, and shrewd in their own simple matters; people who labored in the fields all the day long, or worked themselves blind over the lace pillows in the city.

“You are too young to live alone, Bebee,” said the first of them.  “My old mother shall come and keep house for you.”

“Nay, better come and live with me, Bebee,” said the second.  “I will give you bit and drop, and clothing, too, for the right to your plot of ground.”

“That is to cheat her,” said the third.  “Hark, here, Bebee:  my sister, who is a lone woman, as you know well, shall come and bide with you, and ask you nothing—­nothing at all—­only you shall just give her a crust, perhaps, and a few flowers to sell sometimes.”

“No, no,” said the fourth; “that will not do.  You let me have the garden and the hut, Bebee, and my sons shall till the place for you; and I will live with you myself, and leave the boys the cabin, so you will have all the gain, do you not see, dear little one?”