Would you like to come there,
Bebee?--and wear laces such as you weave, and hear singing and laughter
all night long, and never work any more in the mould of the garden, or
spin any more at that tiresome wheel, or go any more out in the wind, and
the rain, and the winter mud to the market?"
Bebee listened, leaning her round elbows on the table, and her warm
cheeks on her hands, as a child gravely listens to a fairy story. But
the sumptuous picture, and the sensuous phrase he had chosen, passed by
her.
It is of no use to tempt the little chaffinch of the woods with a ruby
instead of a cherry. The bird is made to feed on the brown berries, on
the morning dews, on the scarlet hips of roses, and the blossoms of the
wind-tossed pear boughs; the gem, though it be a monarch's, will only
strike hard and tasteless on its beak.
"I would like to see it all," said Bebee, musingly trying to follow out
her thoughts. "But as for the garden work and the spinning--that I do not
want to leave, because I have done it all my life; and I do not think I
should care to wear lace--it would tear very soon; one would be afraid to
run; and do you see I know how it is made--all that lace.
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