She did not think thus to herself; but a vague doubt that she could ever have been the little gay, laborious, happy Bebee, with troops of friends and endless joys for every day that dawned, came over her as she went by the black front of the Broodhuis.

The strong voice of Lisa, the fruit girl, jarred on her as she passed the stall under its yellow awning that was flapping sullenly in the evening wind.

“Oh he, little fool,” the mocking voice cried, “the rind of the fine pine is full of prickles, and stings the lips when the taste is gone?—­to be sure—­crack common nuts like me and you are never wanting—­hazels grow free in every copse.  Prut, tut! your grand lover lies a-dying; so the students read out of this just now; and you such a simpleton as not to get a roll of napoleons out of him before he went to rot in Paris.  I dare say he was poor as sparrows, if one knew the truth.  He was only a painter after all.”

Lisa tossed her as she spoke a torn sheet, in which she was wrapping gentians:  it was a piece of newspaper some three weeks old, and in it there was a single line or so which said that the artist Flamen, whose Gretchen was the wonder of the Salon of the year, lay sick unto death in his rooms in Paris.

Bebee stood and read; the strong ruddy western light upon the type, the taunting laughter of the fruit girl on her ear.

A bitter shriek rang from her that made even the cruelty of Lisa’s mirth stop in a sudden terror.

She stood staring like a thing changed to stone down on the one name that to her rilled all the universe.

“Ill—­he is ill—­do you hear?” she echoed piteously, looking at Lisa; “and you say he is poor?”

“Poor? for sure! is he not a painter?” said the fruit girl, roughly.  She judged by her own penniless student lads; and she was angered with herself for feeling sorrow for this little silly thing that she had loved to torture.

“You have been bad and base to me; but now—­I bless you, I love you, I will pray for you,” said Bebee, in a swift broken breath, and with a look upon her face that startled into pain her callous enemy.

Then without another word, she thrust the paper in her bosom, and ran out of the square breathless with haste and with a great resolve.

He was ill—­and he was poor!  The brave little soul of her leaped at once to action.  He was sick, and far away; and poor they said.  All danger and all difficulty faded to nothing before the vision of his need.

Bebee was only a little foundling who ran about in wooden shoes; but she had the “dog’s soul” in her—­the soul that will follow faithfully though to receive a curse, that will defend loyally though to meet a blow, and that will die mutely loving to the last.

She went home, how she never knew; and without the delay of a moment packed up a change of linen, and fed the fowls and took the key of the hut down to old Jehan’s cabin.  The old man was only half-witted by reason of his affliction for his dead daughter, but he was shrewd enough to understand what she wanted of him, and honest enough to do it.