The people loved her; she had always believed
that they had only said it as a sort of kindness, as they said, "God keep
you." But now--
"He told me I was like a flower," she thought to herself, and hung over
the well to see. She did not know very well what he had meant; but the
sentence stirred in her heart as a little bird under tremulous leaves.
She waited ten minutes full, leaning and looking down, while her eyes,
that were like the blue iris, smiled back to her from the brown depths
below. Then she went and kneeled down before the old shrine in the wall
of the garden.
"Dear and holy Mother of Jesus, I do thank you that you made me a little
good to look at," she said, softly. "Keep me as you keep the flowers, and
let my face be always fair, because it is a pleasure to _be_ a pleasure.
Ah, dear Mother, I say it so badly, and it sounds so vain, I know. But I
do not think you will be angry, will you? And I am going to try to be
wise."
Then she murmured an ave or two, to be in form as it were, and then rose
and ran along the lanes with her baskets, and brushed the dew lightly
over her bare feet, and sang a little Flemish song for very joyousness,
as the birds sing in the apple bough.
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