“To be sure, dear, and thank you too.  I have not much time, you see; and somehow my back aches badly when I stoop.”

“And it is so damp here for you, over all that water!” said Bebee as she swept and dusted and set to rights the tiny place, and put in a little broken pot a few sprays of honeysuckle and rosemary that she had brought with her.  “It is so damp here.  You should have come and lived in my hut with me, Annemie, and sat out under the vine all day, and looked after the chickens for me when I was in the town.  They are such mischievous little souls; as soon as my back is turned one or other is sure to push through the roof, and get out among the flower-beds.  Will you never change your mind, and live with me, Annemie?  I am sure you would be happy, and the starling says your name quite plain, and he is such a funny bird to talk to; you never would tire of him.  Will you never come?  It is so bright there, and green and sweet smelling; and to think you never even have seen it!—­and the swans and all,—­it is a shame.”

“No, dear,” said old Annemie, eating her last bunch of currants.  “You have said so so often, and you are good and mean it, that I know.  But I could not leave the water.  It would kill me.  Out of this window you know I saw my Jeannot’s brig go away—­away—­away—­till the masts were lost in the mists.  Going with iron to Norway; the ’Fleur d’Epine’ of this town, a good ship, and a sure, and her mate; and as proud as might be, and with a little blest Mary in lead round his throat.  She was to be back in port in eight months, bringing timber.  Eight months—­that brought Easter time.  But she never came.  Never, never, never, you know.  I sat here watching them come and go, and my child sickened and died, and the summer passed, and the autumn, and all the while I looked—­looked—­looked; for the brigs are all much alike; and only her I always saw as soon as she hove in sight (because he tied a hank of flax to her mizzen-mast); and when he was home safe and sound I spun the hank into hose for him; that was a fancy of his, and for eleven voyages, one on another, he had never missed to tie the flax nor I to spin the hose.  But the hank of flax I never saw this time; nor the brave brig; nor my good man with his sunny blue eyes.  Only one day in winter, when the great blocks of ice were smashing hither and thither, a coaster came in and brought tidings of how off in the Danish waters they had come on a water-logged brig, and had boarded her, and had found her empty, and her hull riven in two, and her crew all drowned and dead beyond any manner of doubt.  And on her stern there was her name painted white, the ‘Fleur d’Epine,’ of Brussels, as plain as name could be; and that was all we ever knew:  what evil had struck her, or how they had perished, nobody ever told.  Only the coaster brought that bit of beam away, with the ‘Fleur d’Epine’ writ clear upon it.  But you see I never know my man is dead.  Any day—­who can say?—­any