But the roses shook the water off them in the wind, and said, as she wished them to say,—
"No—no one—ever before, Bébée—no one ever before."
For roses, like everything else upon earth, only speak what our own heart puts into them.
An old man went past up the lane; old Jehan, who was too ailing and aged to make one of the pilgrimage. He looked at the little quick-moving form, grayish white in the starlight, with the dark copper vessel balanced on her head, going to and fro betwixt the well and the garden.
"You did not go to the pilgrimage, poor little one!" he said across the sweetbrier hedge. "Nay, that was too bad; work, work, work—thy pretty back should not be bent double yet. You want a holiday, Bébée; well, the Fête Dieu is near. Jeannot shall take you, and maybe I can find a few sous for gingerbread and merry-go-rounds. You sit dull in the market all day; you want a feast."
Bébée colored behind the hedge, and ran in and brought three new-laid eggs that she had left in the flour-bin in the early morning, and thrust them on him through a break in the brier. It was the first time she had ever done anything of which she might not speak: she was ashamed, and yet the secret was so sweet to her.
"I am very happy, Jehan, thank God!" she murmured, with a tremulous breath and a shine in her eyes that the old man's ears and sight were too dull to discern.
"So was she" muttered Jehan, as he thrust the eggs into his old patched blue blouse,—"so was she. And then a stumble—a blow in the lane there—a horse's kick—and all was over. All over, my pretty one—for ever and ever."
CHAPTER XX.
On a sudden impulse Flamen, going through the woodland shadows to the city, paused and turned back; all his impulses were quick and swayed him now hither, now thither, in many contrary ways.