This had been taught to Bebee, and she went to sleep every night in the
firm belief that the sixteen little angels of the Flemish prayer kept
watch and ward over her bed. For the rest, being poetical, as these north
folks are not, and having in her--wherever it came from, poor little
soul--a warmth of fancy and a spirituality of vision not at all northern,
she had mixed up her religion with the fairies of Antoine's stories, and
the demons in which the Flemish folks are profound believers, and the
flowers into which she put all manner of sentient life, until her
religion was a fantastic medley, so entangled that poor Father Francis
had given up in despair any attempt to arrange it more correctly. Indeed,
being of the peasantry himself, he was not so very full sure in his own
mind that demons were not bodily presences, quite as real and often much
more tangible than saints. Anyway, he let her alone; and she believed in
the goodness of God as she believed in the shining of the sun.
People looked after her as she went through the twisting, picture-like
streets, where sunlight fell still between the peaked high roofs, and
lamps were here and there lit in the bric-a-brac shops and the fruit
stalls.
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