A hard life; very hard when hail and snow made the streets of Brussels
like slopes of ice; a little hard even in the gay summer time when she
sat under the awning fronting the Maison du Roi; but all the time the
child throve on it, and was happy, and dreamed of many graceful and
gracious things whilst she was weeding among her lilies, or tracing the
threads to and fro on her lace pillow.
Now--when she woke to the full sense of her wonderful sixteen
years--Bebee, standing barefoot on the mud floor, was as pretty a sight
as was to be seen betwixt Scheldt and Rhine.
The sun had only left a soft warmth like an apricot's on her white skin.
Her limbs, though strong as a mountain pony's, were slender and well
shaped. Her hair curled in shiny crumpled masses, and tumbled about her
shoulders. Her pretty round plump little breast was white as the lilies
in the grass without, and in this blooming time of her little life,
Bebee, in her way, was beautiful as a peach-bloom is beautiful, and her
innocent, courageous, happy eyes had dreams in them underneath their
laughter, dreams that went farther than the green woods of Laeken,
farther even than the white clouds of summer.
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