But it was no angel; only the thing that is nearer heaven than anything else,—­a little human heart that is happy and innocent.

Bebee had only one sorrow that night.  The pear-blossoms were all dead; and no care could call them back even for an hour’s blooming.

“He did not think when he struck them down,” she said to herself, regretfully.

CHAPTER VIII.

“Can I do any work for you, Bebee?” said black Jeannot in the daybreak, pushing her gate open timidly with one hand.

“There is none to do, Jeannot.  They want so little in this time of the year—­the flowers,” said she, lifting her head from the sweet-peas she was tying up to their sticks.

The woodman did not answer; he leaned over the half-open wicket, and swayed it backwards and forwards under his bare arm.  He was a good, harmless, gentle fellow, swarthy as charcoal and simple as a child, and quite ignorant, having spent all his days in the great Soignies forests making fagots when he was a little lad, and hewing down trees or burning charcoal as he grew to manhood.

“Who was that seigneur with you last night, Bebee?” he asked, after a long silence, watching her as she moved.

Bebee’s eyes grew very soft, but they looked up frankly.

“I am not sure—­I think he is a painter—­a great painter prince, I mean—­as Rubes was in Antwerpen; he wanted roses the night before last in the cathedral.”

“But he was walking with you?”

“He was in the lane as I came home last night—­yes.”

“What does he give you for your roses?”

“Oh! he pays me well.  How is your mother this day, Jeannot?”

“You do not like to talk of him?”

“Why should you want to talk of him?  He is nothing to you.”

“Did you really see him only two days ago, Bebee?”

“Oh, Jeannot! did I ever tell a falsehood?  You would not say that to one of your little sisters.”

The forester swayed the gate to and fro drearily under his folded arms.

Bebee, not regarding him, cut her flowers, and filled her baskets, and did her other work, and set a ladder against the hut and climbed on its low roof to seek for eggs, the hens having green tastes sometimes for the rushes and lichens of its thatch.  She found two eggs, which she promised herself to take to Annemie, and looking round as she sat on the edge of the roof, with one foot on the highest rung of the ladder, saw that Jeannot was still at the gate.

“You will be late in the forest, Jeannot,” she cried to him.  “It is such a long, long way in and out.  Why do you look so sulky? and you are kicking the wicket to pieces.”

“I do not like you to talk with strangers,” said Jeannot, sullenly and sadly.

Bebee laughed as she sat on the edge of the thatch, and looked at the shining gray skies of the early day, and the dew-wet garden, and the green fields beyond, with happy eyes that made the familiar scene transfigured to her.