The church got at it and added to it a saint's name; but for all its
little world it remained Bebee--Bebee when it trotted no higher than
the red carnation heads;--Bebee when its yellow curls touched as high as
the lavender-bush;--Bebee on this proud day when the thrush's song and
the cock's crow found her sixteen years old.
Old Antoine's hut stood in a little patch of garden ground with a brier
hedge all round it, in that byway which lies between Laeken and Brussels,
in the heart of flat, green Brabant, where there are beautiful meadows
and tall, flowering hedges, and forest trees, and fern-filled ditches,
and a little piece of water, deep and cool, where the swans sail all day
long, and the silvery willows dip and sway with the wind.
Turn aside from the highway, and there it lies to-day, and all the place
brims over with grass, and boughs, and blossoms, and flowering beans, and
wild dog-roses; and there are a few cottages and cabins there near the
pretty water, and farther there is an old church, sacred to St. Guido;
and beyond go the green level country and the endless wheat-fields, and
the old mills with their red sails against the sun; and beyond all these
the pale blue, sea-like horizon of the plains of Flanders.
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