Nor even in friendship, for he had rashly spoken rough words against the
stranger from Rubes' land, and Bebee ever since then had passed him by
with a grave, simple greeting, and when he had brought her in timid gifts
a barrow-load of fagots, had thanked him, but had bidden him take the
wood home to his mother.
"You think evil things of me, Bebee?" good Jeannot had pleaded, with a
sob in his voice; and she had answered gently,--
"No; but do not speak to me, that is all."
Then he had cursed her absent lover, and Bebee gone within and closed her
door.
She had no idea that the people thought ill of her. They were cold to
her, and such coldness made her heart ache a little more. But the one
great love in her possessed her so strongly that all other things were
half unreal.
She did her daily housework from sheer habit, and she studied because he
had told her to do it, and because with the sweet, stubborn, credulous
faith of her youth, she never doubted that he would return.
Otherwise there was no perception of real life in her; she dreamed and
prayed, and prayed and dreamed, and never ceased to do either one or the
other, even when she was scattering potato-peels to the fowls, or shaking
carrots loose of the soil, or sweeping the snow from her hut door, or
going out in the raw dark dawn as the single little sad bell of St.
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