CHAPTER III.
"I remembered it was your name-day, child Here are half a dozen eggs,"
said one of the hen wives; and the little cross woman with the pedler's
tray added a waxen St. Agnes, colored red and yellow to the very life no
doubt; and the old Cheap John had saved her a cage for the starling; and
the tinker had a cream cheese for her in a vine-leaf, and the sweetmeat
seller brought her a beautiful gilded horn of sugarplums, and the cobbler
had made her actually a pair of shoes--red shoes, beautiful shoes to go
to mass in and be a wonder in to all the neighborhood. And they thronged
round her, and adored the silver waist buckles; and when Bebee got fairly
to her stall, and traffic began, she thought once more that nobody's
feast day had ever dawned like hers.
When the chimes began to ring all over the city, she could hardly believe
that the carillon was not saying its "Laus Deo" with some special meaning
in its bells of her.
The morning went by as usual; the noise of the throngs about her like a
driving of angry winds, but no more hurting her than the angels on the
roof of St.
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