When they told her she was pretty, she
smiled; it was just as they said that her flowers were sweet.
But this man's hands moved so swiftly; and as she saw her Broodhuis
growing into color and form beneath them, she could not choose but look
now and then, and twice she gave her change wrong.
He spoke to her rarely, and sketched on and on in rapid bold strokes the
quaint graces and massive richness of the Maison du Roi.
There is no crowd so busy in Brabant that it will not find leisure to
stare. The Fleming or the Walloon has nothing of the Frenchman's
courtesy; he is rough and rude; he remains a peasant even when town bred,
and the surly insolence of the "Gueux" is in him still. He is kindly to
his fellows, though not to beasts; he is shrewd, patient, thrifty,
industrious, and good in very many ways, but civil never.
A good score of them left off their occupations and clustered round the
painter, staring, chattering, pushing, pointing, as though a brush had
never been seen in all the land of Rubens.
Bebee, ashamed of her people, got up from her chair and rebuked them.
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