But Bébée now lay quite still and silent on her little bed; as quiet as the waxen Gesù that they laid in the manger at the Nativity.
"If she would only speak!" the women and the children wailed, weeping sorely.
But she never spoke; nor did she seem to know any one of them. Not even the starling as he flew on her pillow and called her.
"Give her rest," they all said; and one by one moved away, being poor folk and hard working, and unable to lose a whole day.
Mère Krebs stayed with her, and Jeannot sat in the porch where her little spinning-wheel stood, and rocked himself to and fro; in vain agony, powerless.
He had done all he could, and it was of no avail.
Then people who had loved her, hearing, came up the green lanes from the city—the cobbler and the tinman, and the old woman who sold saints' pictures by the Broodhuis. The Varnhart children hung about the garden wicket, frightened and sobbing. Old Jehan beat his knees with his hands, and said only over and over again, "Another dead—another dead!—the red mill and I see them all dead!"
The long golden day drifted away, and the swans swayed to and fro, and the willows grew silver in the sunshine.
Bébée, only, lay quite still and never spoke. The starling sat above her head; his wings drooped, and he was silent too.
Towards sunset Bébée raised herself and called aloud: they ran to her.