For her village, in its small way, thought as the big world thinks.

CHAPTER XXIV.

Full winter came.

The snow was deep, and the winds drove the people with whips of ice along the dreary country roads and the steep streets of the city.  The bells of the dogs and the mules sounded sadly through the white misty silence of the Flemish plains, and the weary horses slipped and fell on the frozen ruts and on the jagged stones in the little frost-shut Flemish towns.  Still the Flemish folk were gay enough in many places.

There were fairs and kermesses; there were puppet plays and church feasts; there were sledges on the plains and skates on the canals; there were warm woollen hoods and ruddy wood fires; there were tales of demons and saints, and bowls of hot onion soup; sugar images for the little children, and blessed beads for the maidens clasped on rosy throats with lovers’ kisses; and in the city itself there was the high tide of the winter pomp and mirth, with festal scenes in the churches, and balls at the palaces, and all manner of gay things in toys and jewels, and music playing cheerily under the leafless trees, and flashes of scarlet cloth, and shining furs, and happy faces, and golden curls, in the carriages that climbed the Montagne de la Cour, and filled the big place around the statue of stout Godfrey.

In the little village above St. Guido, Bebee’s neighbors were merry too, in their simple way.

The women worked away wearily at their lace in the dim winter light, and made a wretched living by it, but all the same they got penny playthings for their babies, and a bit of cake for their Sunday-hearth.  They drew together in homely and cordial friendship, and of an afternoon when dusk fell wove their lace in company in Mere Krebs’s mill-house kitchen with the children and the dogs at their feet on the bricks, so that one big fire might serve for all, and all be lighted with one big rush candle, and all be beguiled by chit-chat and songs, stories of spirits, and whispers of ghosts, and now and then when the wind howled at its worst, a paternoster or two said in common for the men toiling in the barges or drifting up the Scheldt.

In these gatherings Bebee’s face was missed, and the blithe soft sound of her voice, like a young thrush singing, was never heard.

The people looked in, and saw her sitting over a great open book; often her hearth had no fire.

Then the children grew tired of asking her to play; and their elders began to shake their heads; she was so pale and so quiet, there must be some evil in it—­so they began to think.

Little by little people dropped away from her.  Who knew, the gossips said, what shame or sin the child might not have on her sick little soul?

True, Bebee worked hard just the same, and just the same was seen trudging to and fro in the dusk of dawns and afternoons in her two little wooden shoes.  She was gentle and laborious, and gave the children her goat’s milk, and the old women the brambles of her garden.