Annemie did not hear or notice; she was still looking out of the hole in
the wall on to the masts, and the sails, and the water.
It was twilight.
From the barges and brigs there came the smell of the sea. The sailors
were shouting to each other. The craft were crowded close, and lost in
the growing darkness. On the other side of the canal the belfries were
ringing for vespers.
"Eleven voyages one and another, and he never forgot to tie the flax
to the mast," Annemie murmured, with her old wrinkled face leaning out
into the gray air. "It used to fly there,--one could see it coming up
half a mile off,--just a pale yellow flake on the wind, like a tress of
my hair, he would say. No, no, I could not go away; he may come to-night,
to-morrow, any time; he is not drowned, not my man; he was all I had, and
God is good, they say."
Bebee listened and looked; then kissed the old shaking hand and took up
the lace patterns and went softly out of the room without speaking.
When old Annemie watched at the window it was useless to seek for any
word or sign of her: people said that she had never been quite right in
her brain since that fatal winter noon sixty years before, when the
coaster had brought into port the broken beam of the good brig "Fleur
d'Epine.
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