The forester swayed the gate to and fro drearily under his folded arms.
Bébée, not regarding him, cut her flowers, and filled her baskets, and did her other work, and set a ladder against the hut and climbed on its low roof to seek for eggs, the hens having green tastes sometimes for the rushes and lichens of its thatch. She found two eggs, which she promised herself to take to Annémie, and looking round as she sat on the edge of the roof, with one foot on the highest rung of the ladder, saw that Jeannot was still at the gate.
"You will be late in the forest, Jeannot," she cried to him. "It is such a long, long way in and out. Why do you look so sulky? and you are kicking the wicket to pieces."
"I do not like you to talk with strangers," said Jeannot, sullenly and sadly.
Bébée laughed as she sat on the edge of the thatch, and looked at the shining gray skies of the early day, and the dew-wet garden, and the green fields beyond, with happy eyes that made the familiar scene transfigured to her.
"Oh, Jeannot, what nonsense! As if I do not talk to a million strangers every summer! as if I could ever sell a flower if I did not! You are cross this morning; that is what it is."
"Do you know the man's name?" said Jeannot, suddenly.
Bébée felt her cheeks grow warm as with some noonday heat of sunshine.
She thought it was with anger against blundering Jeannot's curiosity.
"No! and what would his name be to us, if I did know it? I cannot ask people's names because they buy my roses."
"As if it were only roses!"