That night she worked very late watering her flowers, and trimming them, and then ironing out a little clean white cap for the morrow; and then sitting down under the open lattice to prick out all old Annémie's designs by the strong light of the full moon that flooded her hut with its radiance.
But she sang all the time she worked, and the gay, pretty, wordless songs floated across the water and across the fields, and woke some old people in their beds as they lay with their windows open, and they turned and crossed themselves, and said, "Dear heart!—this is the eve of the Ascension, and the angels are so near we hear them."
But it was no angel; only the thing that is nearer heaven than anything else,—a little human heart that is happy and innocent.
Bébée 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, Bébée?" 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, Bébée?" he asked, after a long silence, watching her as she moved.