She got the money for Annemie and took it to her with fresh patterns to
prick, and the new-laid eggs.
"I wonder what he meant by a dog's heart?" she thought to herself, as she
left the old woman sitting by the hole in the roof pricking out the
parchment in all faith that she earned her money, and looking every now
and then through the forests of masts for the brig with the hank of flax
flying,--the brig that had foundered fifty long years before in the
northern seas, and in the days of her youth.
"What is the dog's heart?" thought Bebee; she had seen a dog she knew--a
dog which all his life long had dragged heavy loads under brutal stripes
along the streets of Brussels--stretch himself on the grave of his
taskmaster and refuse to eat, and persist in lying there until he died,
though he had no memory except of stripes, and no tie to the dead except
pain and sorrow. Was it a heart like this that he meant?
"Was her sailor, indeed, so good to her?" she asked an old gossip of
Annemie's, as she went down the stairs.
The old soul stopped to think with difficulty of such a far-off time, and
resting her brass flagon of milk on the steep step.
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